Faces in the Mirror

2012-02-06T05:25:00.000-08:00

Everybody Must Get Stoned

A Report from One of the Front Lines Of the Culture Wars in Israel

Message from Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

When Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics many years ago that “everybody must get stoned,” I am not sure he had Bet Shemesh in mind. I’m actually not sure what he did mean (in that or many other places), but I am fairly sure it was not about physical intimidation, harassment and assault.

I write these words towards the end of the winter week of my spread-out sabbatical in Jerusalem. It has been a challenging and deeply troubling year in the Jewish state. While security measures and circumstances have brought about a blessed and hopefully long-lasting reduction in terrorist attacks, internal Israeli issues and Jewish extremism have roared to the fore. From the massive social protest movements last summer (the front page of headlines here for many weeks before they broke through for any coverage in the American press), to desecration of mosques and even attacks on IDF soldiers by extremist West Bank settlers waging a private war called “price tag,” to the combined exultation and anguish over the return of Gilad Shalit and the high cost it took to seal that deal, we are a long way, today, from the easy pride and idealized vision of what was in any event a probably mythical past. At the same time a whole slew of seemingly anti-democratic legislation has come before (but not passed!) the Knesset, seeking to limit the rights of NGO’s, minorities, media, and anyone who would dare speak out against governmental policy.

Into all this now comes a painful – shameful – issue of gender segregation and oppression of women in Israel. At least, that’s what I thought the terrible images coming from a place called Bet Shemesh was about. It turns out that even this image is more complicated than I could have initially imagined.

For those not following this news closely, some background. Over the past several months long simmering issues regarding the role of women in Israeli society have been covered in the press as never before. Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) communities have instituted gender-segregated (public) buses, and, while the Supreme Court has insisted that such buses are only legal if totally voluntary, there have been many reported cases of vicious verbal and even physical assaults by Charedi men on women who would not move to the back of the bus (can you believe you are reading such words?) A Charedi neighborhood in Jerusalem attempted to divide a public street in half during Sukkot, mandating that women walk on only one side. A minister of the government giving an award to a female physician refused to attend the ceremony unless the awardee agree not to speak, lest he be forced to hear a woman’s voice. (In the end the awardee herself refused to attend.) Charedi and even National Religious (modern Orthodox) soldiers have demanded to be excused from cultural events, otherwise mandatory for their units, at which women would sing. Last week, while I was here, a woman working her job for the government putting up signs and distributing information was attacked in a Charedi neighborhood just for being there. And in a city called Bet Shemesh, in an incident which was caught on camera and went viral, an eight-year old modestly dressed Orthodox girl named Na’ama Margolese was repeatedly attacked on her short walk to school, called a prostitute and a non-Jew and many other unprintable names ostensibly because she dressed a little differently than the extremist ultra-Orthodox (although, as I said, it turns out this particular incident is more complicated than it seems). She is traumatized, and for a while was simply afraid of any Charedi Jew.

No, this isn’t Iran or Saudi Arabia. It’s important to remember how many wacky proposals and disturbing ideas are put out there in our own country and our own community. The voices of extremists do not represent the whole picture, and should not be allowed to do so.

But extremists will not represent the whole picture, and a community of deceny and progressive values will only remain that way… if extremism is met with a vigorous response. With information, education and engagement, not by anger alone, or alienation, or absence.

My cohort of rabbis at the Shalom Hartman Institute just returned yesterday from a tiyyul (a trip), an educational encounter in Bet Shemesh. We met with, and heard from, a woman who is active at the National Religious Orthodox school that Na’ama Margolese attends, a modern Orthodox man who is working for inner-neighborhood civility, a Charedi woman working towards the same end, we met with Na’ama’s mother – and we heard from a Charedi rabbi from the extremist Toldot Aharon sect who sounded slick and friendly and who said that everyone should get along and the solution to everyone getting along was simple: that the modern Orthodox school should move somewhere else.

And, it turns out, that is what at least this last incident is about. It is a turf war, in a clash of neighborhood lines, where an expanding Charedi community does not want to be anywhere near modern Orthodox, whose lifestyle is even more threatening to their isolated way of life than would be secular Jews… because their children could envision becoming modern Orthodox, whereas the secular world is simply beyond their imagination. And it turns out that much of the extremist reaction in many of the incidents here is a result of real fear… fear of the encroachment of the modern world, of Charedi women going to colleges in increasing numbers as a result of poverty flowing from large families and men avoiding paid work in favor of full time Torah study, fear of a crumbling wall of isolation as information and technology and circumstance make preserving an ancient way of life increasingly impossible.

I am filled with admiration for the mainstream Orthodox families under fire in their very homes, where signs appear telling them to dress even more discretely or not watch television where it can be seen out of the window, or else. They live under real threat. But I was also fascinated by the fact – and the way – that they are fighting back… fighting for their homes, using Facebook, organizing a flash dance of women in the main square of Bet Shemesh (you can see that on You Tube)… and I note that the moderate/modern Orthodox community of Bet Shemesh consists very largely… of Anglo immigrants. These are Jews from English-speaking countries, and they are drawing a line in the sand, bringing values they learned in democratic and progressive countries to stand firm, to not run away, to fight for their homes and their lives.

Extremism in any form calls for a response. We are all locked in a global struggle against all kinds of extremism at the moment. One of the gifts of our own country to the rest of the world is the possibility, the promise… that different kinds of people really can learn to live together. It may have taken us a long time to learn this here, there may be a long way to go (some of the stories our Emeritus, Rabbi Bruce Kahn, tells from his work at the Equal Rights Center are certainly shocking) and we must assert constant vigilance to make sure we do not slip back to where we once were.

But I am proud that it is, in part, American values, and American-style activism, that is being deployed now, to make Israel live up to what it should be. This is a struggle, and the outcome is neither pre-determined nor clear. What Israel needs now is, well… you. To learn, to come, to care… and not to run away.

Sometimes we face a moment – a person making an ethnic slur, telling an inappropriate joke, engaged in offensive behavior – and we know we have to act. Sometimes what we read about disgusts us, or shames us.

So. OK. That is the world we find ourselves in. Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s make it better.

2011-07-21T15:16:00.000-07:00

A Baker's Dozen of Extracurricular Activities

Rabbi Michael Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Studies continue for many hours a day, with so much to say about them.
But there have been a few "extracurricular" activities as well. Some of these (such as the West Bank tour and the movie night) were organized by the Machon, the Shalom Hartman Institute, and the program I am in. Others were things I did on my own. Each of the baker's dozen of activities below would be worth a blog of its own, and I may expand on this, but for now, a quick survey:

1) A tour of the West Bank was one of the most interesting and eye-opening experiences I have ever had in Israel. (Or do we even say "in Israel" for part of the day?) We began the tour with an American-born Israeli attorney named Daniel Seidemann, a colorful character who has advised American and Israeli governments on security issues in an independent capacity, whose claim to have had significant influence is backed up by others, and who often has taken the Israeli government to court to attempt to force it (also sometimes successfully) to change the route of the security fence. His claim is that there remain only two or three more years for a viable two-state solution, that the creeping settlements will soon surround Jerusalem and make a workable and contiguous Palestinian state almost impossible. Our first stop was where the border will probably run in any future agreement, and our second one at the infamous and controversial Sheik Jarrah, where Jewish settlers and squatters have taken up homes in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood, attempting to demolish homes and brandishing the very new and historically dubious claim to have found the grave of an ancient figure known as Simon the Just. The very first sign of a typical "Israeli" type of complications that day came when we tried to go back to the bus, only to find it locked, and all of us waited for 20 minutes in the sun while, we later discovered, the bus driver had gone off to daven (pray) and put on teflillin!

After meeting with Daniel Seidemann, we then headed north from Jerusalem, entered the heart of the territories, discussed what the implications of language were for the region (anything that one chooses to call this area reflects a political bias of one form or another), and then picked up another Danny... this time Colenel Danny Terza, the former chief planner of the "Seam Zone" Barrier. In other words, he is the one who designed the route of the fence, which the man we met with earlier challenged. The two men have often met on opposite sides of court cases! We visited the settlement of Beit Aryeh, and looked down from what Palestinians want as their territory... right onto the runways of Ben Gurion, and the coastal plain of Tel Aviv.

And then things got... really interesting.

We had plans to go into Area A, the part of the West Bank totally controlled by the Palestinians. Israelis are not allowed to enter this area, and we were going only with permission from the Israeli army and an invitation from the Palestinians. But one of the bus drivers -- our friend from the morning, of course -- refused to go in. I put up my hand and asked the organizer incredulously why the company had not known, in advance, where we were going; the reply was that the company had but the driver had not!

So somewhere near Bir Zeit we pulled over, and, at the entrance to Area A, in front of a sign in Hebrew indicating that one was risking one life, we hopped off our bus, and waited... while the other driver shuttled the first group in. Eventually, escorted on the other bus, but a white van with a sign in Arabic saying something like "don't worry that the bus behind us has Hebrew on it, because they are with us," we went in... and headed to the site of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi.

The place is incredible. The presentation was slick, professional, with fund raising videos outlining future plans, envisioning a thriving, middle class, environmentally friendly, world-funded but eventually self-sustaining city of thousands, bringing jobs to the Palestinian areas, ameliorating a significant housing shortage, and serving as a cornerstone of what the planners call "the peace economy." And yes, 12 of 13 steps of the approval process needed from the Israeli government have been met -- the last one being the Prime Minister's approval. And yes, there are issues with access roads and water rights. But if you see me in person, ask to see the fancy brochures and detailed plans; it seems that these Palestinian entrepreneurs, at least, have learned from the very best of Israel's Zionist successes. Hearing from the developer, Bashar El Masri, was inspirational, and a source of hope in an otherwise bleak landscape. I am not sure that the fact that they are being attacked by both Palestinian extremist and settlers who do not want to see Palestinian development succeed is automatic proof that they are doing something right, but it was certainly an argument in their favor.

2) Abu Ghosh. On returning from the tour of the West Bank, it seemed appropriate to maintain the theme of the day, so two friends piled into my car and we headed off to the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh, for a meal at the Lebanese Restaurant, widely considered one of the best places for hummus in all of Israel. It was interesting being in a friendly, educated, thriving Arab village outside of Jerusalem. In its own way, breaking bread in total comfort was another sign of hope. It certainly felt like a perfectly normal thing to do.

3) Two days after the tour of the West Bank, we got a dose of Western culture at the highest levels imaginable. The entire Hartman program -- at this time both my group and the much larger Rabbinic Torah Seminar -- had a special guided tour of the newly renovated Israel museum. We went off into different sections; I made a mistake, I think, in choosing Archeology, the one section of the museum I had seen already, last year, thinking I could learn more from the guided tour (other friends reported great satisfaction with their tours of the other parts of the Museum), and then we gathered on the balcony overlooking the Knesset and the Judean hills, for a first-rate dinner and a world-class talk by the Museum's Director, James Snyder, who had been at the MoMA in New York before coming here. He was a New York figure of a certain type, holding on to the leash of what I later found out was his wife's dog while gesturing and describing the renovation. The Israel Museum is now one of the ten largest museums in the world, and their display of items went from 10,000 objects in 100,000 square feet to a much more spacious, intentionally calming arrangement of 7,000 objects in 200,000 square feet. The Museum is, indeed, totally world class; an amazing evening of art and culture.

4) We returned to the Israel Museum tonight for a concert by Israeli artist Chava Alberstein. In some ways I felt as if I was in the heart of the (older) secular Ashkenazi elite... The performance was packed, and in the beautiful setting of outdoor upper level of the museum. (At the same time, on the same night, I heard that almost 200,000 Israelis are gathering up north for an annual Israeli folk-dance festival in Carmiel... hard to believe those numbers but I am assured that I heard that correctly. And Paul Simon, tonight, perfomed in a northern suburb of Tel Aviv, defiantly breaking the informal artists' boycott and bringing joy and comfort to thousands who were able to attend,)

5) The same spot, on the upper level of the Israel Museum, featured in the opening scene of the new award-winning, critically acclaimed and amazingly popular Israeli movie "Footnote." It stars Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi, who Julie and I loved in "Walk on Water." He looks totally different here, barely recognizable as the same actor... and this movie is about the cutthroat competition in the ivory-tower academic world of arcane Talmudic research. (Really. Seriously. Could I make that up?) It is a surpisingly powerful film about family rivalry, academic insularity, honesty, truth and integrity. We saw the film together with a group of academics... we rabbis accompanied the Hartman Institute's North American Scholars' Circle to the Jerusalem Theater to see the film, and some of the academics were deeply disturbed by the movie. I hope it comes to the States with subtitles soon, and I recommend it. (The Hartman Institute had a subtle mention in the movie, product placement which certainly made the organizers of our evening proud!)

6) Another cultural experience was a bit different from the world of academia and museums. Apparently there is American funding for cultural renewal in Jerusalem in a setting that is neither political nor overtly religious. So, this past Monday night, the Hartman folks made sure we had an evening out... at Balabasta, the musical and dance extravaganza held every Monday night, during the summer, in the already crowded corridors of Machane Yehuda. Amazing to see bands playing from rooftops, people dancing on balconies, clowns and costumed characters walking all around. Great experience, great meal at an Eastern (Iraqi?) style restaurant called "The Skewer." I would not have known this whole thing was going on without it being on our program, so I am grateful... and I think we were the only English speakers for miles around.

7) The school I visited the other day, with Arabs and Jews studying together, I described in a previous posting.

8) We heard earlier today from one of our teachers, Alick Isaacs, a postmodernist philosopher who brought us all squarely into the world of the unity of opposites... and who is now leaving Hartman to pursue what he views as his calling... an organization called "Talking Peace," which he founded with others, aimed at bringing about an internal, Israeli, Jewish values discussion of what peace really means, with participation from committed right-wing settlers to well known leftist peace activists, who are having an impact on each other by listening to each other in ways they never have before.

9) Tel Aviv last weekend was... amazing. Both the service at the Tel Aviv port (which I first wrote about last year in a post called "Facing West" and which I will return to again in a future post) and wandering around the Carmel Market and newly redeveloped areas of southern Tel Aviv, Nachalat Binyamin and Neve Tzedek, were amazing experiences. The contrast between the two cities, an hour apart, could not be greater; different worlds, truly.

10) Se'udah Sh'lishit -- the third meal, referring to a Saturday evening meal held before the end of Shabbat -- was a wonderful experience last week, as an American-born Reform rabbi who made aliyah upon his retirement a decade ago invited me over, along with some local and some other North American colleagues. It was a great chance to hear a "home" perspective from relatively new Israelis, in the Anglo community here.

11) Driving and parking in Israel has been an adventure. My trip to the municipality to get a "tav chanaya," a parking sticker, was a double adventure. My colleague and roommate Rabbi Jonathan Hecht had paved the way for me with three hours worth of aggravation the week before I arrived. He kindly took me downtown to show me which the right buildings (plural) to go to were, and in which order, and which papers I would need... but, of course, the offices were all closed on the Friday morning we went there. (We thought they would be open until early afternoon.) So I went back on Sunday, went through everything he told me to do, and then found out that I could not get the sticker because we were here for less than a month. I pleaded (having gotten nailed with a ticket just that morning), indicating that I had already been here a week, had had no time to come in earlier... and the lease was for a month. I was told that "only Shuli can decide" what to do, and had visions of said Shuli being off on a honeymoon in India or something. But eventually they found Shuli, got approval... and, after giving me a real run-around, then reached out, took my ticket, stuck a note on it... and told me not to worry about it. What a stereotypical taste of what I imagine Israel to be! Impossible... and then a close family feeling... all at once.

12) I visited a colleague who was at Hartman, but had to go to the hospital. I learned several things about Israeli hospitals. First, there are no televisions or phones in the rooms. Second, the doctors are good, but are out on strike. And third, no clergy parking spaces.

13) I am looking forward to a return visit to some other places outside the city, including a visit to a home in Tzur Hadassah this coming Sunday night. Jerusalem may be one of the centers of the world, but it is, in its own way, not necessarily the center of Israel. Getting out and around is a reminder that the country is bigger than one enchanting, enraging, magical city... that the magic and miracle that is this country is not limited just to Jerusalem.

More soon.

2011-07-20T15:08:00.001-07:00

Catching Up and Looking Back I:
Overview of the First Two Weeks In Israel,

Summer 2011

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

Delays and Departures

Despite getting to Dulles Airport in plenty of time, going through security and boarding, a storm blew through, closed the airport… and we sat on the airplane, for an extra two hours before take off. I had a good book, but was worried about connections in London. Well, I ran at Heathrow, and, out of breath, I made the plane, one of my bags made the plane… and one of the bags stayed in London. Julie had advised me to pack medicine and toiletries in the carry on; guess I’ll listen better next time! (The bag was delivered from London all the way to where we were studying 36-hours late, so as travel stories goes this is a relatively happy ending).

Renting a car at the airport was a new experience… as was driving on Israel’s roads. The good news is that I was somehow awake enough to drive despite (characteristically) barely sleeping on either flight. The other pieces of good news is that my Israeli cell phone rang, with a message, practically as soon as I turned it on (although it took me days to figure out how to set the message and get some other guy’s name off the machine, as well as reach someone who spoke English slowly rather than Hebrew at 100 miles an hour to explain how to get voice mail messages). I am the proud owner of a permanent Israeli cell phone number!

The other thing that worked, to my very pleasant surprise…was the GPS we bought last summer. Talia had called the thing “Miss Directions,” and I think it was one of the most fitting names I had ever heard. But, lo and behold, once I had a stern talking to the thing, and threatened it with being tossed out the window, suddenly, she started to behave!! She is finding addresses she would not find last year, I am figuring out what she means in terms of the timing of her turns, and her British accent was always kind of appealing. We seem to have made peace.

The bad news was the traffic; totally stuck for over an hour with a bad accident on the way to Jerusalem. Multi-car collision, as was apparent when I eventually passed it. They say that, without any doubts, driving is the most dangerous part of living in Israel. Felt that way, right off the bat.

Easing In

I am renting an apartment this year in the neighborhood of Rechavia (very close to where I lived during the second semester of my Junior Year at Hebrew University), sharing it with my colleague and fellow-student at Hartman Rabbi Jonathan Hecht and his wife Gladys Rosenblum. Gladys was very nicely waiting for me when I got in, and introduced me to the two-bedroom apartment. I was too late for the evening program at Hartman that night, so, essentially, I had missed the opening day.

But showing up on the second day was like coming home and being greeting as a long-lost friend. It was a great feeling to come “back.”

And there are hundreds of rabbis around during the first two weeks. Our program is largely rolled into the larger one, which any rabbi can attend, during this time period. Sometimes it feels as if everyone you know is saying hello, all at once.

Peoplehood

The “theme” for the first two weeks of our studies this year was “Peoplehood,” which, personally, I think is the single most challenging concept on the North American Jewish agenda. Do we still feel a sense of connection with a large whole, with a collective, when our ethnic Judaism fades into history, when we are now (often for good, by the way) a mixture of so many new people, and as an unrestrained individualism takes ever firmer control of the conceptual universe of American Jews?

I will cover some of the approaches to the topic as I review individual day in my next post. But the program was well run this summer, with high-level presentations and important conversations, of which, more below.

Chevruta Study (Paired Learning): A Typical Day At the Machon

Last week I was able to take out to dinner one of my former Bar Mitzvah and Confirmation students, a young man I am very fond of who is about to enter his senior year of college and with whom I have had ongoing and fairly deep conversations about Jewish life. To my great delight I discovered that he was in Israel for two months, working at an agency called the Association for Civil Rights in Israel… and that he had an apartment about a block and a half from mine.

When we went out to dinner last Thursday night (including Gladys), he was gracious and as interested in what I was doing as I was in his work; very poised, he asked me what a typical day was like for me.

The Hartman “method” is powerful (borrowed in part from the Yeshiva world) and worth explaining in more detail.

In the morning, we arrive early (usually at 8:30am), in the large Beit Midrash (study hall), with small tables and only some seats facing the speaker. The scholar or presenter for the morning comes in, lays out the texts that we should be studying, outlines general issues and asks us a number of leading questions… and then sends us off on our own, for an hour and half to two ours. Some people have the same study partners each time, others, you should pardon the expression, “study around.” Some remain in the Beit Midrash, others find places throughout the rest of the campus. We study the texts we have been given, often in Hebrew or Aramaic but also, often, referring to the English translations. Then, what typically happens, is that we come back at 11 AM and the scholar blows us away by taking us in totally unexpected directions and laying out perspectives we had not come up with despite the leading questions. It is mostly an awe-inspiring experience, tinged with an occasional twinge of wondering why we couldn’t get it… or an even more triumphant feeling if, every once in a while, we actually did anticipate where someone was going. (Those who have been here for many years or know the individual scholars’ writings well seem to be able to do that more frequently). We have breakout groups after the presentation to de-brief, then lunch at the Machon, then afternoon electives (more on those later). Then the two week students got a longer break, but my program often continued an hour later with “roundtables” in which each of us needs to make presentations to our group. During the first two weeks this was followed by dinner at the Machon, and then the evening program.

So, for those first to weeks, the time was tight, and the days were long. Those who did have families here barely saw them, but we were busy for almost 14-hours straight.

It continues to be, however, the highest quality study experience of my career, and I will go into more detail on the content of what we have covered in the next post.

2011-07-20T14:52:00.001-07:00

Street Names and Stone Steps

Rabbi Michael Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Paraphrasing a comment I heard: a rabbi I know who has lived in Jerusalem told me that attending “guide school” – training to be a tour guide in Israel – taught almost as much about Judaism as did rabbinical school.

I can believe that. If it sounds strange, well, just take a walk around, in any Israeli city.

It’s not only the ancient sites and religious rites. It’s simpler than that. Decoding the street names is a major, profound history lesson all in itself.

In Jerusalem, I live this summer in a neighborhood called Rechavia. My apartment is on Abrabanel… a brilliant medieval Spanish Biblical commentator. What are some of the other street names I can think of here? Let’s see. Ramban. Ibn Ezra. Ben Maimon (Maimonides). Or: in the neighborhood of Baka, all the tribes of Israel. Last summer I lived on Gideon. It was near Asher and Shimshon and so on. Closer in to town we have Ben Yehuda (who restored Hebrew as a spoken language) and Usshiskin, and Palmach (the fighting force at the beginning of the state) is not far away. The Machon (the Hartman Institute) is near Kaf Tet B’November, the 29^th of November (the day of the UN vote on partition, if anyone needs the reference).

The highways outside of town? The other day I took the Begin to get to the Golda Meir interchange. You take those roads to get to Ben Gurion (the airport). In Tel Aviv names from early Zionist history come to mind: Allenby and, again, Ben Yehuda; medieval poet Ibn G’virol,

Walking around is simply a delight. You look at a map, but you look back in time, and to know who the streets are named after is a lesson in history, ancient and modern, and Jewish life all unto itself.

Of course, in Jerusalem… in all of Israel, perhaps, when walking around one should watch one’s step.

This summer, just as last summer, the last step on the way out of the apartment, for some reason, is totally uneven. It is, in other words, not at all the same depth as the other steps.

Why anyone would build this way is beyond me. I am wondering, however, if it is something of a metaphor.

Because just as everything here, it throws you off your usual stride. It requires extra concentration, a slight bit of extra thought. Not everything is packaged and branded into conformity. And not everything around us is what we think it will be.

If there is an added awareness, an extra intensity, a sense of concentration on important things that is needed just to get around here, well, you know… I think I like it. The fact that the step is a different size…I don’t know if it was an accident, or a mistake, or part of some pattern I simply don’t see yet.

But it fits. And here, in Israel, even an extra half step teaches us about how we stand, and who we are.

2011-07-19T07:39:00.001-07:00

Balconies and Balancing Acts:
First Report from My Second Summer
at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

Rabbi Michael Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Two weeks and a day in Israel now, and this is one of the very first chances I have had to sit and reflect, to think and to write. It has been a whirlwind, full days of learning and sharing, insight and opportunities.

This was supposed to be a half day, and a slow one. It is one of those minor fast days on the Jewish calendar – not nearly as well known, or as widely observed at Tisha B’Av (the 9^th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day in late July or early August most years when both the first and the second Temples were destroyed, and the same day on which the Jews were expelled from Spain.) This is Shiva Asar B’Tammuz, the 17^th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz (which precedes Av), the day on which the ancient walls of Jerusalem were breached. Even many who observe Tisha B’Av do not fast on this day; shops and restaurants all seem open, and we were served by kippah-wearing bakers and chefs in a number of places.

Still, what was supposed to be a half day at the Machon (the Insitute, meaning the Shalom Hartman Institute, where I am in the second of four Julys of intensive study in a multi-denominational program with rabbis from all branches of Judaism) quickly turned into one of the most interesting days of my trip.

Immediately after the morning Talmud Study (a lesson from a fabulous teacher on the tractate of the Talmud dealing with fasts), my group of 28 rabbis was invited to meet with officers from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) who were at the Machon at the beginning of what would be, for them, a two week program. What are they doing there? It turns out, as I had learned last summer, that all officers, of all branches of the IDF, once they reach a certain rank (captain?), are now required to take a course in Jewish identity, democracy and pluralism offered by the Hartman Institute. Since the Machon I am at was founded by a liberal, pluralistically oriented, democracy supporting Orthodox rabbi named David Hartman, this has to be a good thing. Indeed, the officers were learning about all different branches of Judaism. There was even a Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) rabbi downstairs speaking with them – an incredible thing in and of itself since the Charedi tend to be anti-Zionist and do not support the symbols and institutions of the state, such as the military (whose soldiers, by the way, put their lives on the line to defend the Charedim who refuse to serve at all).

Around fifteen of the North American rabbis stayed for this optional discussion, meeting with a group of twenty or so officers. We wound up having a half hour to talk; I wish this had gone on for two hours.

I spoke with one man and one woman, both of whom define themselves as secular, both of whom had all kinds of questions for me. (My friend Debbie Newman Kamin, a Conservative rabbi from Chicago, was getting stunned questions at the next table. A woman rabbi? They’d heard of it, but, they kind of didn’t believe it.) The male office said he grew up secular but was in the midst of wondering who he is, what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be Israeli, what kind of family he wants to have and what kind of world he wants to work for, and he was beginning to realize that there was a spiritual component to these questions. He also said that many of his fellow officers had never thought much about what it meant to be “Jewish,” a question they had all been asked to reflect on a couple of days ago. He was struck, he said, by how many of the stories these Israelis told about being Jewish had to do with trips overseas, questions raised by travel either to the United States or to Europe. In his case, a trip to Poland and the death camps got him thinking about Judaism as a religion for the first time in his life. The female officer I spoke with was of Iraqi descent, although her uncle had married a woman from London and belonged, in Israel, to a Reform synagogue. She described herself as an atheist, but when I asked her what she meant by not believing in God she said that she did not believe that God wrote the Torah, and when I said that I agreed with her, and, further, that all the Reform and Conservative rabbis in the room did as well, she was a bit shocked. The officer another friend spoke with said he, too, did not know how to relate to Judaism per se, and that he had never really thought about Judaism in terms of moral concerns until he was stationed, on the West Bank, in a place where he had to protect Charedi Jews who wanted to pray at some new site… and he had to occupy Palestinian homes in the middle of the night in order to protect these ultra-Orthodox Jews. What is the right thing to do, and what is the proper way to behave. Moral questions, certainly, but, he now realized… these are Jewish questions as well.

From this too brief conversation, Debbie, my friend Sid and I walked down to Emek Refaim, the main street in the upscale, mixed modern-Orthodox/secular, heavily Anglo-oriented German Colony, and grabbed lunch (yes, I confess, I don’t fast on the 17^th of Tammuz). And then, at Debbie’s invitation, Ira picked us up. Who is Ira? He was known as Ira Cohen when he was in the States, before he made aliyah, and among other things he had opened the very first Kosher Kitchen, a kind of coop that I remember in White Oak, in the Washington area in the 1980’s. Now, though…. Now, he works with a number of Federations, but also represents a school system called Yad B’Yad (Hand in Hand), and it was the Jerusalem campus of one of the three Yad B’Yad schools that we want to visit. This is essentially a charter school in Jerusalem, with one-third government funding, one-third funding from tuition, and the rest from donations… which, almost uniquely, educates Jewish and Arab students together! For readers in the United States used to the multi-cultural context in which we live, it is very hard to appreciate just how rare, how incredibly special such an institution is. It is a bi-lingual school, with each class having one Arabic speaking teacher and one Hebrew speaking teacher (plus the kids learn English beginning in third grade). There was neighborhood opposition to the school at first, but the beautiful campus and community outreach have won most people over. Friendships form among children…and families. Jews and Arabs invite one another into their homes. A special curriculum had to be developed (rather than the state curriculum) for both history (teaching several narratives side by side) and religion (since there are students from at least three religions attending this school). We spoke with some of the teachers and saw the youngest kids and the teenagers who attended the summer camp; what a breath of hope and fresh air in the midst of hostility and suspicion! The students face questions from friends who attend other schools; some of their Jewish friends can’t believe the Jewish students go to school with Arabs, and (to my shame and sadness), the Arabs react with incredulity that the Arab students have had Jews in their homes who did not try to attach them. Stereotypes have set in strongly and deeply during the past decade; the hope and openness brought by Oslo seem long past and deeply buried. But, as I have written elsewhere, it was only a decade and a half ago. It can happen again. It can. It really can.

This is just one part, of one day, with more to come and lots more to reflect on concerning the first two weeks here. I have been at services by the sea, and welcomed into homes; we have met in several contexts with the new leader of the Reform movement, and sat with leaders of all North American denominations. The large group of rabbis (several hundred) who studied at Hartman for the first two weeks, with whom we interacted closely during their two weeks here are gone, leaving just my cohort for the next week and a half (along with Hartman’s North American Scholars Circle, and a group of Christian Leaders, with whom we will also study). I have toured the West Bank (including entering into the closed portion of the Palestinian Authority, Area A), and gone off to an Israeli Arab town for dinner. I have walked through Jerusalem street festivals, and seen the latest Israeli movie (a thriller about, get this, the cutthroat competition in the field of academic Talmudic research). I have studied ancient text and the lastest Israeli rock music. I have seen young adults, children, and several couples from our congregation, and heard from some of the leading thinkers in Israel and North America. I have been on rooftops and in cellars. And I have not, once, been to the Wall.

But this piece is getting long already, so I will try to write about some of those experiences later tonight.

I sit near a balcony in my Jerusalem apartment, in the once secular elite and now, somewhat rapidly Charedifying (is that a word?) neighborhood of Rechavia. It is quier, for the moment, and the breeze stirs the leaves while a warm humid blanket of air still sits upon the city. In one direction, just beyond the balcony, is the Israel Museum and the Knessset, the centerpieces of modern Israel, the pride of Israeli sovereignty. In another direction is the center of the city, and then, further away, the Old City I have yet to visit on this trip. So many different perspectives. So many different views, from one balacony. Apart from missing my family greatly… how blessed I am to be here!

Until I can write again, my love to all of you.

L’shalom (In Peace),

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

2010-12-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

White Lies and Tall Tales in a WikiLeak World

Sermon delivered on Parashat Vayechi; December 17, 2010

Imagine the scene: Jacob dies, but even before the trip back to Long Island or New Jersey or Old Canaan to the designated family section of the cemetery, before the burial Joseph’s brothers huddle together to plot a strategy of their own. Fearing wrathful retribution for childhood rivalries seemingly set aside, revenge held in abeyance while yet their father lived, Jacob’s other sons conspire in the arena of tall tales and white lies: they will tell Joseph, they decide, that their father had left word, a posthumous proscription, for Joseph to forgive the brothers.

All is well in the tale we tell, but imagine a different twist. An intrepid interloper, an ancient exposer of secrets with a fetish for freedom of information, snoops and tells. Before the brothers even have a chance to present a case to their elevated sibling, leaked cables appear in the Goshen Gazette and the Cairo Daily News: “Foreign Infiltrators Conspire to Mislead Prime Minister,” the headlines scream. “Leaked Cables Reveal Brothers’ Pitiful Plan.” And instead of reconciliation and harmony, popular Egyptian outrage leads the politician Joseph to cut off family ties. No solidarity, no moving forward with the family story, no Exodus, no parted sea, no Sinai, no Torah, no Judaism.

Flash forward, to a scene in an American university, just a few years ago. There, a course in Jewish mysticism is being offered, the esoteric tradition called Kabbalah, by a professor named Fox so seemingly pompous that his students refer to him affectionately as F-x. Before the class begins the professor looks at the students, a mixture of male and female, graduate and undergraduate students, Jews and gentiles. “I presume,” he intones, “that you are all male, married, over 40 years old, Orthodox in practice, and that you know the Torah and Talmud by heart! Having said that,” and here, he pounds the table for emphasis, having just recited the traditional Jewish prerequisites for delving into this slippery and perspective-altering subject matter, “having said that, let’s begin.”

Our tradition teaches that there are certain topics that require preparation, orientation, grounding in classic texts and communal connections before plunging in. Our tradition teaches that in a complicated world, context counts.

But the very concept that some people know some things that other do not, that there is any legitimacy to an overarching framework formulated by someone else into which facts can be fit, the notion that raw data needs time to grow, be sifted and sorted, thoughtfully and privately before being brought out in the light of day… that concept itself is apparently profoundly offensive to some people in our post-modern world.

We live at a time when time does not stop: 24/7 news cycles mean information is always available, the page is always refreshed, the past is passed over in the blink of an eye. We have grown accustomed to instant gratification, to phones that are smarter than we are – who hasn’t been at a perfectly pleasant dinner table when one person has mentioned a topic or expressed uncertainty about something, and someone else has whipped out their cell and called up Google fact check on the spot. You’ve seen it. I’ve done it. The truth is out there.

I’ll never forget one of my first realizations of how much the world had changed because everyone has instant access to information, communication, and their own private arbiters of opinion. It was a minor incident, but a striking one for me, and it took place on our Confirmation class trip to New York City in 2002. The bus was heading into the city, but there was a lot of traffic, and while the driver, Andy, Scott and I are staring ahead of the bus, unbeknownst to us, a half dozen of the kids whipped out their cell phones and called home. “Lincoln Tunnel blocked; what do we do?” In came the answers – at least five contradictory and equally strongly argued parental opinions, in real time from 200 miles away.

Let’s raise the stakes on a similar scenario. I remember reports from our local Jewish Day School’s senior year semester in Israel, at the height of the second intifada. Phone calls back and forth went like this: either kids called their folks to say they were okay in the face of something their parents had not and probably would not have heard about, or parents woke their kids up to ask if they were okay because they heard, here, about something their kids never noticed. The communication took place in such real time that organizers of trips and programs had no time to put their heads together and give even a moment of thought to how they would present what had happened, how they would convey what they were doing to adjust their plans.

And so questions. Is “spin” automatically a four-letter word? Do we have a right to borders and boundaries, to taking a breath, to having a place to process and sift and think through what we are going to do, without constant exposure? Is there a value in trying out an idea, in exploring an opinion, or does everything have to be instantly ready for prime time? What do we do, how do we evaluate the imagery of light? Is the protective shield of privacy a shady respite from a too-glaring sun, or a looming menace, a heart of darkness?

My friends, I believe that there is something wrong in a Wikileak World. But it is hard to say exactly what is wrong, or how much, or where the line is.

There is, of course, another side to the story. We have lived through governments that lie, and conspiracies to control public opinion, break into opponents’ offices, abuse power and manipulate the media. Just today I heard word about government suppression of information regarding the hunt for former Nazis. Sunshine laws are not just for prurient interest; they were passed for a reason, and to address real abuses.

But like the sports commentator watching a play unfold and dramatically intoning that “he could go all the way,” how far do we want openness to go? Is there not some limit to what we just have to know? I am not a lawyer, or an expert on national security, so whether what is going on is illegal or rises to the level of treason is certainly beyond me.

What I do know, though, is that there is a difference between being smart and being wise. Being smart may involve knowing things, being up to speed on what’s going on, finding all the facts and hoarding them like some obsessive collector. But wisdom requires discretion, discernment, and distinction. It involves knowing what to reveal, and when. It involves an understanding… of context.

We have just finished the celebration of a minor but well-known holiday. Chanukah purports to be the celebration of a single jar of oil which lasted for eight days. Historians, however, dispute the details; theologians claims there is more to it than this, and rabbis – or at least this one – insist on spoiling the story for adults and older students.

Why the age distinction? Because we know, or at least we believe…that there is such a thing as developmental stages of understanding, that there are age-appropriate images, and that a certain concrete expression of ideas is more suited to younger children.

But who are we to judge such a thing? Isn’t that arrogant, to be arbiters of information? Shouldn’t we just put it all out there, and not pre-judge who can handle which version of a story?

In my ideal world, I see shades of grey, and nuance and shadow. I believe it is appropriate to consider… what is considered appropriate. I see a mixture of sun and shade, of openness and privacy. And I believe that a certain kind of growth comes from exploration, from trying out ideas and opinions we are not yet sure of, of sharing that exploration with others in a context in which we feel safe and comfortable, before proclaiming everything in public.

And I also believe that people are… well, human. That for all of us there are outbursts of emotion which we would not want to “own” in public.

The best example I can think of in this regard is my own reaction to a heinous crime, or a terrorist attack. The very first thoughts in my head – which do occasionally make it into words which come out of my mouth – are not necessarily in full accordance with judicial procedures or political realities or contextual restraints I actually want to see upheld. I wouldn’t want – I wouldn’t dare, and I wouldn’t endorse – a public pronouncement… of some of those instantaneous emotional gut reactions.

Maybe if you remember the Woody Allen line about peering into the soul of the student sitting next to him… many people do want to see that inner instinct, that first emotional reaction, to judge the fullness of a person.

Do you remember the presidential debate between Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush? Do you remember that awful question asked at the outset? “If your wife, Kitty, were raped and murdered…” I actually believe that Michael Dukakis may have lost the election solely on the basis of the flat, robot-like response he gave… to that emotional opening

Here is how I would have answered. “Bernie, what a horrible question. I understand you want to get at whether our high talk stands up when things get personal, but let’s leave our families out of this. If you want to know how I would react as a man, I would react as any husband would: I would want to find and hurt the person who did this with my own hands. In the long run, though, though, how we treat criminals is about our values as a society, and it is a better thing for everyone that we live in a world of law and not frontier justice and emotionally charged matters like personal revenge….” And then I would have given the content of the answer he gave.

I know showing instant emotion would have served Dukakis better at that moment. So I get it, that people want to know… what is going on, inside the people who are vying to be our leaders. And I get it, that unchecked privacy leads to abuse.

What I don’t get, and I don’t want, is a world in which there is no privacy at all.

Or, let’s put it this way: how come so many of the people who are exposing all these secrets… get to be anonymous themselves? Is this tangle really about principle, or about power?

Maybe Wikileaks is really a stand in… for a new brand of theology. Maybe all they want us all to remember… is that even when we think we are alone… there is always someone watching. With words from the morning liturgy, “l’olam y’hei adam y’rai shamayim baseiter u’va’galu’i; at all times let us revere God inwardly, as well as outwardly.”

But when only God is watching, really, that’s between us and God. And frankly, given the secrets God keeps… I think even God understands a little bit about shadow and shade, the meeting place of darkness and light.

At the beginning of this parasha, this week’s Torah portion, unique among the portions of the entire Torah… there is no space. There is no gap. The rabbis called this, then, a “closed” portion; they make a great deal – really, through quite a stretch – of the fact that our eyes are therefore “closed” during what is happening in this portion.

But there is a gap after the portion. It is a large gap, the end of the book of Bereishit, of Genesis, before the beginning of Shemot, of Exodus. And in this whole question of space, its absence at the outset, its abundance at the end, I am reminded that to tell a tale is not just about what happens on stage. It is also about what goes on off stage, the implied, the hidden, the out-of-sight. A story is not just about what unfolds explicitly; it is also about the assumptions we bring, and the changes that go on over the course of the story. It is about what is said with words, and about what is in between the lines.

Not everything can be told. Growth takes place in the gaps. And it is the written word together with the hidden hand, the darkness dancing with the light, both, together, that bring us the full story. In the wholeness of who you are, there is a place for sharing, and there is a place for secrets. The dark truth and, yes, perhaps, occasionally, even the white lie. Elu v’elu, these and these… We need both.

2010-08-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

Facing West: Spirit and Service on the Beach in Tel Aviv

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, MD

So maybe it's "the next big thing." Or maybe it's a passing fad. I don't know which it is. What I do know was that something new is happening here, that I never saw coming.

I first heard about Beit Tefilah Yisraeli (Israeli House of Prayer) in early July, when I first arrived to study at the Hartman Institute. I heard about it in the context of something very... ususual, I thought. All these Reform and Conservative rabbis who were talking about leaving Jerusalem and... going to Tel Aviv for Shabbat.

Now Tel Aviv has many things to recommend it. It is clearly the cultural and commercial capital of the country; it has the best restaurants; it has the most jobs; half the population lives in the Tel Aviv Metropolitan area.

But to leave Jerusalem, and go... to Tel Aviv. For Shabbat? (No offense to our many colleagues in the area; the Reform synagogues in the region - from Beit Daniel to the congregations in Ra'anana, Ramat Aviv, and Ramat HaSharon -- are doing wonderful work.) It just seemed... odd.

And then, on July 30, we found out why people were going... to Tel Aviv for Shabbat.

The service takes place at the revitalized Tel Aviv port (section 14); it is outdoors, it faces the crashing waves of the ocean right on a pier, right in the midst of the crowded port scene: bustling night-clubs and swank restaurants and bikini-clad passersby titling their heads in curiosity and coming up to see what all these plastic chairs and odd-sounding music and hundreds of people gathered together was all about.

This was a deep, moving and profoundly spiritual experience.

It is hard to convey just how exciting this development is to those unfamiliar with historical perceptions about the Jewish religion on the part of most Israelis. In general, non-Orthodox Israelis have tended to view “Judaism” as “Orthodoxy,” concluded that it was “not for them,” and then defined themselves as “secular.” It is an odd term in many ways, since many Israelis engage in activity which American Jews would define as “religious.” Some “secular” Israelis light candles on Friday night, even more avoid shrimp and pork -- despite the increasing availability of treif-options in non-kosher restaurants around the country, and in one way or another almost all Israelis observe the general flow of the Jewish calendar. But to non-Orthodox Israelis this is simply “cultural” or even “national” behavior. The fledgling Reform and Conservative movements, growing in presence and impact, are still seen by many Israelis as American imports. Indeed, even in services conducted entirely in Hebrew, some Reform congregations in Israel feel as if they are 90% filled with native speakers of English.

But not this service.

It was filled with people of all ages, but a preponderance of young, native-born Israelis. The service mingled traditional prayers with recent poetry, and some of the “liturgy” included modern Israeli rock/pop music. Julie noted, on looking at the siddur (the prayerbook), that the traditional prayers were printed with vowels, but the paragraphs of modern Hebrew and explanations and poetry and music were not… an indication, perhaps, that the parts which were the most familiar to us… were the least familiar to these mostly secular Israelis.

The service was facilitated by a hipster-looking “reader,” (not a rabbi), who directed the seven or so instruments around him (flute, oboe, guitar, bass, violin and others), called out page numbers in the mostly sung service. As if in confirmation of Julie’s sense of what was new and what was unfamiliar, Israelis sung with gusto and enthusiasm the modern songs, and dealt with the traditional words with a varying degree of comfort.

And then we came to the central part of the service, the Amidah.

Here is where Jews around the world rise, and – wherever we are – face towards Jerusalem. In the West Jews face East. In Moscow, we face south. In South Africa we face north. That is the way it has been. That is the way it is, except in some Reform synagogues which were deliberately trying to make a different kind of statement.

What does it mean, then, that at this service on the beach in Tel Aviv, we remained “oriented” in a different direction. We rose and… faced the waves. Was it the sand and the sea? Or was it more than that, a statement of spiritual influence, coming somehow… from the West. Was it turning one’s back on Jerusalem as an accident, or – in a country in which the disputed capitol stands, in many minds, for intransigent ultra-Orthodoxy and an unswerving commitment to the ways of the past – was it a statement of intent?

One other thing I learned. The spiritual creativity of this almost spontaneous community is not confined to Friday nights at the beach.

Memorial Day – Yom HaZikaron – is one of the saddest days on the Israeli calendar. There are moments of complete silence, the sounding of a siren throughout the country… and in a nation in which no family has not lost someone close to them in its wars for survival and existence, it is not likely to give way to barbeques and commercial sales any time soon.

Yom HaZikaron takes place… the day before Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day. Now that is a day for celebration, for joy, for exuberance.

But how do you get from one to the other? It is an awkward transition, a moment in which those who start to party slightly too soon as scathingly chastised by their still mourning neighbors.

I learned this summer that the people who put together this Erev Shabbat service in Tel Aviv have also written… a Havdalah ceremony. Havdalah (“separation”) is, of course, usually associated with the transition time in between the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the week. There is also a Havdalah at the end of major festivals, although that is far less widely known.

But now… now there is an hour-long ceremony of distinction and separation, easing the transition from loss to gain, from memory to celebration. One woman, having attended this creative service, remarked that it was the first time in the 25-years since she had lost her son that she was actually able to appreciate Yom HaAtzma’ut.

What does the future hold? Will there be more of this infusion of home-grown, creative Jewish religious content into non-Orthodox Israeli life? In some ways this is something that we might have expected to see decades ago, but only starting to take hold now.

What we are witnessing now is nothing less than a new chapter in the most important Jewish book still being written: what does it mean to be Jewish in a Jewish state?

The Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox have always had their own answers to that question. Reform and Conservative Jews, in much smaller numbers, have tried to get on the page as well.

This is a new entry in an ongoing story. May it grow, and take hold, and take its place proudly, with all the other ways of answering ancient questions about meaning, and memory, and Jewish life.

2010-07-27T21:26:00.000-07:00

A View from the North

Rabbi Michael Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, MD

Yesterday was an important reminder...
When you are in Jerusalem, and the golden light surrounds you, and the ancient stones beckon, and you run into half of the people you've ever met... Jerusalem is more than a feeling of home. It feels like a pre-Copernican experience. The world revolves around it. It feels like the center of the universe.

Except, of course... that it is not the beginning and end of everything.
It is not even... all of Israel.

How many times I have travelled the country? (This is my 9th trip here, but two of them were for entire years.) And yet there is power in every tree for me, every barren and dusty hill.

I have been in a bus, or even on foot. Rarely have I had a car, and driven the roads myself. (That is a good thing, given the fact that Israeli drivers make the agressive drivers of Washington look polite, but that is another matter.) It does give it a new feel...

The choice we faced yesterday, in heading north, was quite clear. Through the heart of Israel, every traffic light and falafel stand and bus route and busy modern intersection? (Actually I am exaggerating, and the new highways even take some of the local flavor away.) Or: through the territories, through the West Bank; save an hour or more and travel right along the Jordanian border.

Our guide was direct and clear. We'd be crazy to go through the center of the country.
So off we went, through the (new) tunnel leaving Mt. Scopus, past the machson (checkpoint), whizzing by Ma'ale Adumim (sitting atop a hillside of suburban Jerusalem, it is by far the largest of the "settlements" -- and also widely expected to remain in Israeli hands after any potential peace deal with the Palestinians), winding our way down towards the Dead Sea (a brief glimpse in a dusty distance), passing by the camels and cows and goat herders and pottery stands... veering away from the Allenby Bridge into Jordan, turning left to head north, fifty miles of Judea and Samaria... Palestinian towns, settler farmland... and not a blink of an instant of a problem. (Not that we went into Ramallah, nor into the winding hill country of Samaria... We just stuck with the flat, relatively straight highway. The most activity we saw on the way were in the towns and cities of Jordan we glimpsed in the distance.)

And then the north. Beit She'an, Belvoir (a Crusader castle on top of a hill which I had onced hiked up and which Daniel wanted us to divert to)... and Kinneret. The Sea of Galilee.

We stopped for lunch at Degania Aleph, the first ever kibbutz, the place where the sucessful communal enterprise was born and given to the world. They have rennovated parts of the kibbutz, and are gearing up for their centennial celebration this coming October. Lunch was terrific in a small cafe with no English speakers. Really, a feeling of being "in Israel." (Jerusalem is more other-worldly than the rest of Israel, it is true... but it is at the same time more American. En route yesterday, though, even the few McDonald's signs were written in Hebrew instead of English.) And then...

Well, one of our colleagues told us about it, and we have a personal connection there anyway (because 30 years ago Julie was a volunteer there)... Then we went to Degania Bet. Where after a second trip in we found what we had heard about -- a chocolate factory with an experiential component... a chance for the kids to make their own chocolate (after an educational film about the entire process, from seed to tree to bean to bar.) Best chocolate she ever had, Julie said on tasting it. (Or among the best: my theory is that she believes that chocolate is like a camera -- the best one is the one you have with you when you want it!) She noted that the cows looked the same as they did 30 years ago. But the chocolate experience did not. (How new is it? Not sure. I come to Israel every two years now, and am still seeing new things every time I come.)

Traffic jam in Tiberius (where are all these people from, after the solitude of the rest of the trip, and where are they going), passing by (not stopping) Decks (one of the best restaurants in Israel), and Nof Ginnosar (where we will be staying with the group next week)... then winding our way up into the mountains, great views of the lake from the switchback trails, towars S'fat but veering north. We are staying in kayak country, at Kibbutz HaGoshrim... tucked just near the Lebanese border to the north and Golan Heights to the east... planning on spending a few days hiking, swimming, exploring... (Overnight scare of missing iPhone successfully resolved!)

Jerusalem is... well... home. But this is a different kind of home. It is "real" Israel. Even Golan. So very hard to imagine how it can ever be given back... you have to see it to know how much of a gut feeling that is... but even setting politics aside it is so wonderful. I know it will have to go, someday, but today is today. And we are here. And it is real. And I am happy.

2010-07-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

Return Again:
Endings and Beginnings

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, MD

There are two words written on the bottom of the final page of every masechet (tractate) of the Talmud. The words are in Aramaic, but they mean, roughly: "return to you." "We're not done with you." "God is not done with us." "We haven't gotten everything there is out of this yet." "We will return."

Everyone knows the joy of going over something familiar, and finding a fresh insight in it, something you had never thought of before. Everyone knows the power -- sometimes joyous, sometimes poignant -- of coming back to a once familiar place, and seeing it through new eyes, or in a new way.

Al echad kama v'kama... how much the more so for me this summer...

I think the only thing that made the end of my stay at the Shalom Hartman Institute for the summer, and my family's departure from Jerusalem yesterday bearable... was those two Aramaic words, with their ancient promise... "We will return to this place." Literally, for us, in just two weeks with the Temple trip. But also, for me, to the learning, and the learners, of this summer... which will continue, winter and summer, for the next three years.

How can I describe the Hartman Institution, and this program, without sounding like I have, to use what I have always found a puzzling phrase, "drunk the Kool-Aide?" What made this so special, I believe, was the content, the context and the colleagues.

The content. What we learned was simply the highest quality educational experience of my career -- on the most urgent and pressing questions of our time. A small sample: Moshe Halbertal, one of the co-authors of the code of ethics for the Israeli military, teaching us not only his theory of the Rambam (Maimonides), but also reviewing with us -- and having us study it as if it were an ancient text, with careful parsing of each word -- that very code of ethics itself. Rani Jaeger, founder of a new Tel Aviv based spiritual community which draws hundreds of secular Israelis to servies on a beach with drums and guitars every Friday night -- speaking on the new Israeli spirituality, and the deep, almost unconscious Jewish content lurking behind the cultural and everyday experiences of life in the Jewish state. (Not just obvious things, like the fact that reading a map with street names in any Israeli city introduces you to the entire world of Jewish and Israeli history in ways which are hard to describe -- he didn't even mention this aspect of life here, but it is hard for an American to miss. Street names that ask questions, like 29 November Street, or a street pronounced by Israelis as Avraham Linkolin -- which is actually Abraham Lincoln street, but Hebrew can't quite handle an unpronounced consonant.) Discussions and panels and peer study on questions such as the meaning of Judaism after the Jewish state. Or questioning who defines "the good." Or asking what is an ethical approach to the use of power based on Jewish sources? Or dealing with the complex and existentially central question of the meaning of peoplehood in a world of individuality, autonomy and choice.

And Rambam. Rambam, Rambam, Rambam! I don't think I fully realized the degree, before I came to Hartman (fully locution, that... people talk about "doing Hartman" the way they do about "doing Chautauqua," and the pluralistic approach to Jewish life and sources is referred to as the "Hartman Torah"), the degree to which Rabbi David Hartman, his son Rabbi Donniel Hartman, and many of the scholars assembled here... focus on the work of Moshe Maimonides -- nor was I prepared for an in-depth introduction to the Rambam as a classical philosopher, political thinker, social strategist, community organizer, legal theorist, God-seeker, intellectual rationalist, scientist and mystic! (All this in one man! Yes, and this, by the way, is why there is a saying "from Moses to Moses [Maimonides], there was never anyone like Moses.")

For a quarter of the content alone, a tenth of it even, dayyeinu! It would have been enough!

But then the context.
To study these things here, in Jerusaelm... steps from where the events we study took place, and in the light of the world we live in... wow! Questions of Jewish sovereignty are no longer theoretical. For two thousand years we wrote about what we thought God wanted of us and what we should expect of each other, with absolutely no realistic opportunity to implement our vision, our values, to test our ideals against the anvil of everyday life. And now? Now we are called into reality, to see where we stand, and what we are made of not just in powerlessness, but power. There are Jewish discussions that are only words in the air, even in an open society such as the United States, but which here... here those words are life and death decisions with real world implications, every day, and for everyone. Here the cab drivers run the Knesset in their own minds, and the postal delivery routes take in this dream-like, sun-drenched intoxicating mixture of yesterday, today and tomorrow just in the course of their daily rounds. To study about Jewish ethics and the use of power and who determines what is good in a place where these things matter... for that, too, dayyeinu.

But the most valuable piece... the teachers... and my fellow learners. The colleagues who are travelling this path with me. To study together with colleagues from all streams of Judaism... that alone gives a wider vision of Jewish life and possiblity than I had before coming, or have had in quite some time. Too many Boards of Rabbis are so divided that communities (such as ours, in Washington D.C.), have two such organizations -- one Orthodox, and the other everyone else. What a mechayah (wonderful experience) to study together, to come together (although the Orthodox colleagues who come here have their own interesting sets of issues with the... very pluralistic approach... of the originally Orthodox founders of this place, and they have to be open enough to deal with or at least live with the issues this raises for them). But this...

We have members of our congregation travelling next month to New Orleans, in a continuing and ongoing effort to rebuild parts of the city. The first thing I thought of after just a short period of my cohort being together? Oh, these congregants have to contact this colleague of mine who is there, when they get to New Orleans. Never mind that he heads a community it would not even have dawned on me to think of, just a few weeks ago.

If any of my colleagues, those in my "cohort" of fellow learners read these words... thank you, for the gift of your presence, and your company on this journey. May we continue to learn from each other, and share the energy and enthusiasm we find here with those we teach and pray with back in our own "everyday" worlds.

Content, context and colleagues. Hadaran! We're not done with each other yet.
Just as, after so many years in exile: we shall come back to this place. We will return.

2010-07-27T19:57:00.000-07:00

Destruction and Renewal
(Slow Prayers on a Fast Day)
Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, Maryland

What a powerful and odd feeling, to be in Jerusalem for Tisha B'Av.

For those who are not familiar with it, Tisha B'Av -- the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av -- is, traditinally, the saddest day of the Hebrew calendar. It is the date on which the first Temple was destroyed (because, in a retroactive act of theological meaning making in which all causes were presupposed to be internal and in our own hands, of avodah zarah -- idolatry). It is the same date, we are told (or perhaps a day or two off) on which the Second Temple was destroyed (this time, we are told, because of sinat chinam -- baseless hatred amongst factions of Jews - a claim perhaps closer to historical truth given how divided the community was, and absent actual rebellion against Rome who knows what might or might not have happened.) Known ever after as a day of mouring and fasting -- a full, Yom Kippur like fast -- the enemies of our people have deliberately chosen this date to pile additional misery upon us. Thus, then, it was the date on which the Jews of Spain were expelled -- and the fact that Columbus sailed the day before the edict went into effect in 1492 had led to scholarly speculation about whether he was, himself, a hidden Jew (as, it is certain, were some of the members of his crew).

But Tisha B'Av, outside of Jewish camps, is little known among liberal Jews. This is partly for practical reasons, because it inconveniently falls too far away from the time when religious schools are in session, so it is often ignored in the curriculum. But, more significantly, there were ideological reasons for downplaying the day. The early Reform movement was eager to emphasize how possible it was to feel fully at home in the lands of our dispersion, and so dispensed with this day of wailing and weeping for a sovereignty lost, and a Temple destroyed whose literal cult practices and attendant animal sacrifices we were less than eager to see restored. One eary and radical Reform rabbi went so far as to see Tisha B'Av as a cause for celebration, a feast and not a fast, for thus and thereby were we spread among the nations -- thus giving us the opportunity to live in and influence the entire world, fulfilling what he perceived as our highest calling and ultimate mission as a "light unto the nations."

But of such destructive flames more heat and hurt come than light. And to cut ourselves off from the pain our people went through on this day is... well, to cut ourselves off from our history and our people itself, to deny the communal past and assert a kind of Judaism which consists primarily of individual cognitive affirmation.

The more pressing challenge to the observance of Tisha B'Av, I believe... is how to integrate the reality of renewal... the fact that this day of bewailing our exile comes to us at a time when we have planted new seeds and seen a rebirth of national sovereignty in the modern state of Israel.

My family chose to go to the wall. But not the mobbed, barely conceivable seen of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men surging forward at the main section. No, instead we went to Robinson's Arch, what one Conservative colleague calls "a wall of our own," the southern section of the Western Wall, part of an archeological site but available -- by order of the Israeli Supreme Court -- to Reform and Conservative Jews for separate religious observances. The main part of the wall itself has become, essentially, a Charedi (ultra-Orthodox) synagogue, and I have deeply mixed feelings about it.

And there, sitting amidst hundreds of others at a service led by the Israeli Masorti (Conservative) movement, it was the most powerful -- but still odd -- Tisha B'Av of my life. The haunting, plaintif (and slow!) chanting of the book of Eicha (Lamentations) wafted over the ancient stones... the very overturned stones the words were written about! There we were, sitting... right there! That's where it all happened! This is where it was all about. (Fortunately for my children, though it grew too dark to read and the service was 100% in Hebrew in any event... the Tanakh app on my iPhone had an English translation -- and the iPhone itself was backlit enough for them to see!) (Israelis sitting next to us were duly impressed.) (More about my possibly missing new iPhone in another post.)

And yet, we emerge from services into... into what? A quiet street, with restaurants and cafes closed, yes. But a living, vibrant... and real Israel. Should we not... mark the change in some way? How to acknowledge that the existential situation of the Jewish people is fundamentally different after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 than it was before? What, are we to ignore the fact that the lost independance we are mourning... is now found again?

So my compromise has been this: I remember. I recite some of the prayers of Tisha B'Av, for the pain is part of our collective history, and the victims of this day deserve their due. I remember. But I do not fast. For we are here, and we are back... and sitting in the ruined shadow of ancient stones, I know that this is a time of memory, and mourning... and gratitude and quiet satisfaction as well.

Am Yisrael Chai. Sitting in our land, surrounded by the signs of our national rebirth, fragile as it sometimes seems -- we are here, the enemies have not defeated us. And so while not a time for parties, and certainly appropriate for slow prayers, I do not fast on Tisha B'Av.

But what meaning... to be here!

2010-07-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

Letter from Jerusalem (Part One)

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom
Chevy Chase, Maryland

Shabbat slips into the past, and the city awakens from its restful slumber. The rest of my family pokes out onto the increasingly busy streets, in search of ice cream and about to brush up against friends and strangers from all over the world. I am left with a moment of quiet, to reflect on what a profound two weeks it has been.

Great and monumental events happen around us, blocks away or even in front of our eyes, and at the same time I am so immersed in the most powerful experience of growth and learning that I have had in 20 years, and so it is hard to pick apart the strands, and weave my way between what you must be hearing back home, and what we are experiencing here.

What I want to share at the moment, however, are some reflections on the timely and important events which I assume you have heard something about over the past several days: the latest legislative initiative to codify conversion practices in Israel, and the arrest of Reform leader Anat Hoffman at the Western Wall.

Whenever it comes to Israel, at some point, it seems, someone inevitably sighs and says: “It’s complicated.” That has to do with issues of international relations, war and peace, negotiations and security… and it applies equally profoundly to the internal issues of Israeli society, such as navigating the path between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews (lumped together as all “secular” in common parlance here, but including, of course, those “religious” but non-Orthodox streams such as Reform and Conservative Judaism), immigrants and veterans, army life and societal norms.

Yes, you have heard (I assume) about the new conversion bill tabled in the Knesset, and how it will consolidate the power over conversion in Israel in the hands of the charedi (ultra-Orthodox)-controlled Chief Rabbinate. Yes, you may have heard about the Reform movement response to this mess (also visible at www.urj.org and www.rac.org). But before we plunge into the conversations, a bit of background will help. The best explanation I have seen about the reason why such a bill came up in the first-place, before it was politically hijacked for other purposes, can be found in a recent editorial in the Jerusalem Post. In his well-written piece, “Don’t Fracture the Jewish People” (available online at www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=181575), the Post’s editor David Horovitz explains why this bill was put forward by a Russian immigrant party called Yisrael Beiteinu, why it was meant to help 350,000 new Israelis from the former Soviet Union who are not considered Jewish by Jewish law – and why the bill won’t now achieve that purpose, if ever it would or could have. There is every reason to write Prime Minister Netanyahu with our thoughts and passionate opposition to this bill, with our plea that he makes sure it never becomes law. But it is also important to know the nuances and the history as well.

The other disturbing development in the past several days was the arrest, on Rosh Hodesh Av (the first day of the Hebrew month of Av), at the Western Wall, of Israeli Reform leader Anat Hoffman, complete with (You Tube accessible) video footage of the police practically ripping a Torah scroll out of her hands. Some of my colleagues here, some of the female Reform and Conservative rabbis I am studying with at the Shalom Hartman Institute, were at the monthly service of a group called Women of the Wall, and witnessed this atrocity first hand. The Wall is supposed to be a unifying symbol of the entire Jewish people – indeed, in these days leading up to Tisha B’Av (the ninth of Av, the somber fast-day which commemorates the destruction of both the First and Second Temples) we are reminded that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred between and amongst different factions of our own people. The tragic reality is that the Wall has become – often with the assistance of the Israeli police – the private domain of the most sexist, fanatical, narrow-minded extremists of our people. The story of Women of the Wall, however – and our own synagogue’s coming attempt to have a service at or near the Wall on August 6 – represent the other side of the story, however – the commitment to an Israel of Jewish pride, pluralism and equal rights. If this is a story of extremism it is also one of heroism, and of a long struggle whose ultimate outcome will be decided not in the coming days or weeks but over the course of the coming years. I strongly urge you to read more about Women of the Wall at their own website (http://womenofthewall.org.il). In the midst of our anger at these crazy extremists, let us remember the courage and tenacity of those who fight to shape Israel into what she can and, we believe, should be.

This letter is already getting long, and I have not yet begun to share the blessing, and the amazing quality, of the experience of study I came here for in the first place. There are so many issues to share, beyond the topical ones of conversion and religious pluralism, and so much more at stake in what is going on in terms of engaging Israel. Indeed at some level these flash-point issues are things we catch-up on only in the morning or at the end of the day, when we have a chance to glance at the news. (One exception was when Natan Sharansky spoke at the Hartman Institute, days before the conversion bill was voted on in committee – and the Orthodox but pluralistically-inclined founder of the Institute, Rabbi David Hartman, publicly begged Sharansky to play whatever role he could in preventing this bill from passing, which, as the new chair of the Jewish Agency, Scharansky has now attempted to do.)

But few of you will read more and may not have made it this far, so I will close with an ongoing invitation to engagement, and a sense of gratitude to all of those who have supported my presence here… and who, I hope, will benefit from the learning, and the depth, of this experience.

Awaiting the arrival of the Temple Shalom trip (they depart from the States on August 2), and thinking of all of you…

With my love,

L’shalom (In Peace)…

2010-07-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

Day One of the Rest of My Life:

Reflections on Travels and Study

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

I think it is Carly Simon I have running through my head. "Anticipation..." When you have been looking forward to something for so long, sometimes, somehow, it just isn't what you pictured it to be. (The single best example I can think of where something I looked forward to so intensely really ran just the way I hoped and dreamed it would be was the day of Benjamin's Bar Mitzvah last October, one of the best days of my life.) As to this sabbatical, this time in Israel: I remember when the mental sand-dial turned over in my head... when I passed the half-way point between my last trip to Israel, and my current one. I have been counting down ever since.

And on this day, my heart is full, with so much to tell, and such gratitude about being here.

The trip was smooth: the long layover at Newark after being dropped off by my in-laws went comfortably and quickly, El Al security and check in was smooth, and the only glitch was an hour delay on the plane because the in-flight entertainment system was not working. (Glad they fixed it; watched two movies during the flight; would consider an Ambien the next time I take an 11:50pm flight.) My seat had a "wing view" so I missed that much anticipated customary first glance of land when traveling to Israel, but I've seen that before and I'll be coming back soon enough. But the feeling of standing on line at the Israeli passport control, of going to the "foreign passport" holders line, of looking around and feeling on the wrong line because it really feels like coming home... that was the same. The long walk from the plane to baggage claim went alright; the bags were there after not too long a wait. One of the ATM machines behind the bank tellers actually worked, and so I was in a cab with shekels in my pocket and listening to Moshe the taxi-driver from Ashkelon's life-story in record time; it might have been less than an hour from landing.

My pre-delivered cell phone actually had some charge left in it; I reached the landlady, and after some adventures in GPS-land, we found the apartment, in a maze of streets that look more like a warren than they did on Google Maps... The apartment is nice but a bit bare; Julie was right in guessing that "first floor" means the one 21 steps up, rather than ground level. There is an elevator that fits one person at a time -- and that's brand new, so the residents are celebrating it. I had to bring all my bags right through the middle of a shivah service; someone had passed away in the building, and the entire family clan was gathered together taking up the whole entranceway... stepping right into and through someone else's life-cycle event lent a typically intense/intimate Israeli tone to my arrival.

After a quick tour of the apartment (lots to remember: the stove works differently, some lights were out, the hot water heater is on a timer, the instructions on the washer are in Hebrew, which I can kind of handle, and the ones on the dryer are in German -- which is a bit more problematic), my cell phone rings. It is a young woman from our congregation who is finishing up a year in Israel dancing with a kibbutz-based dance company here, in Israel for only two more days and in Jerusalem for that evening. So off we went, along with a friend of hers, hitting the streets just an hour after my arrival. We discovered that the main thoroughfare of the German Colony, Emek Refaim, is just a minute from the apartment -- you have to cross what was once a train track called Derekh HaRakevet (Railroad Way), which is under current construction and transformation into a pedestrian walkway of some sort, so that was kind of torn up and unsightly. But there, steps beyond, were all the cafes, ice cream shops, hip stores, falafel joints and chocolate stores once could want. It was still lively at 10am on a Sunday night.

Whatever it took to get me out was worth it; it was wonderful to hear about my friend's year and see how at home she is here. The friend she brought with her is modern Orthodox; just as the well-known Orthodox boxer (Yuri Forman I think his name is) faces some issues in balancing his religious practice and his sport/profession, so, too, does this woman face some challenges -- complicated by expectations which apply only to women. Beyond just questions of tzni'ut (modesty) which she has somehow found a way through, other lifestyle issues came up. While the young woman from Washington was blown away that, at age 21, one of her friends is getting married, the unmarried modern Orthodox friend of the same age who was with her was describing the number of babies that her friends from home already have. All a matter of where you come from...

And then there was today.

Not sure how I managed to get up early, but I wandered out of the apartment at 7am heading towards the Hartman Institute, the site of my study program, which I had never been to before. I assume it takes around fifteen minutes walking from the apartment, but I have not done it in minimum time yet as I keep getting distracted and wandering off. This morning I found the street where we almost rented a (third floor!) apartment, and, just as described,, a bakery was right next to it. The owner waved me in, gave me hotter and fresher versions of the pastry I was pointing to, and I left tasting one item and saving the rest.

The Hartman Institute itself was... amazing. What a campus. There seems to be a high school on the grounds; today there was a confluence of at least five different programs: it was IDF day at Hartman. Apparently all high-level officers of the Israel Defense Forces now spend a day at Hartman, learning about issues of religious pluralism and democracy and tolerance and respect, from a Jewish-values based curriculum, in their service of the Jewish state. There were the 30-colleagues beginning my three-year program. There were the 30-or so colleagues finishing the last cycle of the previous program (they "graduate" tomorrow and are here for only two-weeks during their final summer). There were the rabbis who come to the open two-week program offered every summer, which also began today. And there were a group of lay leaders from North America, towards the end of their study time here, on a program of study I simply have to get some of our congregational leaders to participate in. (The lay leaders go home next week; I think a whole group of priests and ministers is replacing them; we break bread and share study time with those Christian clergy as part of our program one day down the road.)

Anyone who knows the feeling of seeing colleagues and friends come together after a long absence knows what the opening moment of greetings and surprise-encounters along with expected reunions is like. A friend and colleague from a previous region told me both about a previous mild-heart attack he had had... and how he feels as close to the people he studied with over the three years here as any other colleagues or friends.

The introductions alone of our cohort blew me away. We each were asked to speak for 5-7 minutes, which for some rabbis obviously means 10-12, but... wow. There was one man who was raised in Lakewood, NJ in a charedi (ultra-Orthodox world) and whose open exploration of pluralistic Orthodoxy is a defiant rebellion against his family. There was one woman who is called a "rosh kehillah" by her Orthodox community; the term does not translate as "rabbi" but as "head of the community," a position which she may uniquely hold in the Orthodox world. And that's just two of us...

We had three "content" based sessions today. The first was the introduction of an overarching "theme" for the summer, which will be shared in common by both the new and finishing three-year cohorts and the two-week folks (in other words, by all 150 or so rabbis who are here). That theme is Engaging Israel, and today's talk was led by Rabbi Donniel Hartman, the charismatic Orthodox son of the founder of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi David Hartman (who we heard from this evening.)

I have heard Donniel speak three times now; each occasion has been very powerful. (One such was the occasion on which he said that, were he a Reform rabbi in North America today, he probably would do interfaith marriages.) I wish I had the time to touch base on all of what he said, but, as briefly as I can: he said that they picked this theme (which you may think is an obvious one since we are here but which is unusual for the Hartman Institute to tackle) out of a sense of urgency, almost an emergency in what is going on in Diaspora-Israel relations. He spoke of the inadequacy of Israel advocacy, because it focused on facts, as if having just the right piece of data would allow someone to "win" an argument in a way to which the critics of Israel could not have a realistic response. He spoke about how all the basic stories, the narratives we tell about Israel,are problematic and even contradictory -- either Israel is here in case, God forbid, there should be another Holocaust (and, of course, you know its coming, don't you? Just wait, and then we can say we told you so!), or, that Israel is in danger, and needs support because Jews have to support each other. In the first place the argument is a solution to a problem most Diaspora Jews -- who feel totally and fully at home in their countries -- do not have, and in the second case few people see Israel on the verge of destruction. Five years of Kassam rockets, Donniel said, killed fewer people than in the first five seconds of Operation Cast Led. That does not mean the Kassam rockets did not need a military response, only that Israel's response was that of a country in a position of strength, not weakness. We are telling the wrong stories, and substituting facts for feelings and we wonder why there is a disconnect.

Can we not, Hartman asked, develop a new language, a Jewish-values based language for what Israel means and why it is important? (And he says this knowing, of course, the limits to how broad an appeal Jewish values-language will have to a North American Jewish community that in its majority unaffiliated lifestyle has often evinced little evidence of taking Judaism seriously.) (He managed to state this in a descriptive way; putting people down for what they do not do was not his main point and seems antithetical to his overall approach). He stated the need for a Jewish and democratic state -- clearly commenting that if we can't have both "I'm outta here" -- and the importance for viewing this young country as a work in progress. The five essential issues we will be tackling in the days to come are: 1) the question of peoplehood, because if the concept of Jewish peoplehood exits the value-system of Jews -- and it might in a North American its-all-about-what-works-for-me individualistic environment this could happen -- then Israel is irrelevant. Here the challenge is, frankly, most pointed for Reform Jews, who once stated -- wrongly, I believe, and since corrected -- that Judaism was a faith but not a folk. If Judaism becomes a private experience only, however, any special relationship with Israel becomes essentially meaningless. 2) the question of sovereignty, 3) the challenge of power -- what is a Jewish Torah of power, what does it mean to use power in a Jewish way. 4) the challenge to power (the concept, coming from Europe but spreading beyond it, that the use of power is inherently evil, and when one returns to powerlessness -- and only then -- will one have returned to the domain of morality, and 5) since Zionism was, at its core, an ideology -- what are some of the " big ideas" that Jews can bring to our enterprise of sovereignty.

Then we had lunch. By the time our cohort got there the soldiers were finishing up, but earlier groups got to interact with the IDF officers.

This afternoon we had the first of four sessions in the Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism, about which I know... very little, frankly. It was fascinating, even if the opening passage did focus on a poetic call to wake up, out of the slumber of ordinary thinking. This was either a brilliant or unfortunate choice for a group of jet-lagged students.

Finally this evening we heard from the founder of the Hartman Institute, Rabbi David Hartman. We studied a Talmudic argument regarding bringing about redemption between one view which says redemption requires repentance and good deeds, and the other that it means just surviving, and watched that argument play out throughout Jewish history. Israel is, Hartman the elder said, an essential act of belief in the idea that things can change, that redemption is about attitude and action, that the concept of Israel, the reality of it, is an affirmation of the category of the possible, the idea that tomorrow really can be different from today.

Taking all this in clearly called for ice cream. And we're back at it tomorrow morning, in a traditional form of "paired" learning called "chevruta study."

If you made it through this far, I hope you have enjoyed this "taste" of my time here, and I hope to have the koach (the energy) to do this again tomorrow night. I called Arie, our tour-guide for the Temple trip, and at 9pm tomorrow he is free; apparently we will be watching a soccer game tomorrow at a downtown bar. Well-earned drink after all these high ideas and ideals, I would say.

My thanks to all of you -- all of you -- who have any part in my being here...

With my best,

From Jerusalem,

Michael Feshbach

2010-06-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

A Big Story:
Preview of an Apolitical Movie

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

There's not that much apolitical material coming out of the Middle East these days. Or, more to the point, there' plenty of apolitical space in the daily lives and cultural experience of those who live there -- but when those of us from "outside" Israel think of the place, it is usually, first and foremost, in terms of conflict or religion or in a big picture kind of way.

But I just saw a press screening preview of a new Israeli movie which may not have mentioned the conflict with the Palestinians or religious-secular tension even once. And I didn't miss it.

Instead, the "politics" of this film were about body-image, self-esteem, and finding your place in the world.

If I have any quarrel with the film it is a quibble kind of quarrel: I am not thrilled with the translation of the title. The film is called Sippur Gadol in Hebrew...I would have translated that as "A Big Story." Instead, the film is called, in English, "A Matter of Size." But that's a little thing, I suppose, in the light of a wonderful hour and a half.

So here's the story: the film begins in a diet club in the Israeli town of Ramla, where everyone weighs in but -- unlike Weight Watchers here in the States, and in typically Israeli communal fashion -- your weight is shouted out loud at the weigh-in, along with either encouragement or insults.

One man, Herzl, simply can't seem to lose weight. There is no evidence that he is cheating on the diet, he just isn't built to lose weight. Understanding is not one of the nuanced strengths of this club, however, and so he is unceremoniously kicked out. He also loses his job because of his overall appearance, and finds new work cleaning dishes at a Japanesse restaurant. And it is here that things get interesting, as he first encounters Japanese traditions, cultures, and a certain highly specialized form of the martial arts. And so, soon enough, Herzl and his friends form Israel's first ever sumo wrestling team.

The film opens here in Washington at the Avaolon Theater of Friday, July 2.

A version of it apparently played earlier in this area, at the Washignton Jewish Film Festival, but I missed it there; it is well worth the hassle of finding parking near the Avalon (although I suppose that walking an extra block or two to see a movie about training to get in shape won't hurt)(and I wonder about sales at the concession stands for such a film!). I am attempting to attach a link from a different review(http://www.forward.com/articles/104846/) but in my own comments I would say: this film was light (pun intended), deep without being obvious about it, and it shows a whole different side to Israeli life than we are used to seeing or thinking about.

And the challenging question I would pose to myself or others is this: which comes first -- physical health, or acceptance of oneself? How do we reward ourselves? And what are the greatest rewards of all?

2010-06-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Faces in the Mirror

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach,

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

[This was the introduction to my column for America OnLine from 1997-2002;
I will rewrite it shortly, but the reasons why I am writing, and what it says about my perspective, still applies.]

A distinguished teacher and leader of our movement, a brilliant writer and an inspiration to me, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, who was in Sudbury, Massachusetts for many years, tells the following story:

One of a rabbi's happier jobs is making guest appearances in thecongregation's pre school. A few years ago...their teacher asked if I wouldgive the children a tour of the prayer hall. I decided to save the contentsof the ark...for last. But I lost track of time, and suddenly spied theteacher discreetly signalling from the back of the room that school wasalmost over. Not wanting to rush through the sacred contents of the ark, I decided to savethem for a special session. I promised the children that the next time wemet I would open the curtains and together we would see what was inside. The teacher later informed me that such a hasty conclusion had generated a heateddiscussion among the little people as to what exactly was in the ark "behind the curtains." One kid, doubtless a budding nihilist, thought it was empty. Another,apparently a devotee of American television consumer culture, opined thatbehind the curtain was "a brand new car." Another correctly guessed that itheld the scrolls of the Torah. But one kid, the teacher insists, said "You'reall wrong. When the rabbi opens that curtain next week, there will just be a big mirror."
(excerpted from God was in This Place and I, i did not Know)

A big mirror. In a sense, that Sudbury child's answer is one of the most profound comments about the Torah that I have ever heard. For truly, what we see when we open the ark, when we read the ancient words and gaze at the parchment scroll...are our own faces, our own issues and concerns and feelings.

With any book we read, any movie we see...and, especially with the Torah...we bring ourselves to the reading, the seeing, the understanding. Without us, it is not there. And that, for Jews as well as for those of other faiths, is precisely the power of the Bible.

It has always been so. We are soon to celebrate the cycle of Torah, the end and beginning, the completion and the commencement of the longest running syndicated re run in world history (only with this show, the rights to it are there for any takers.)

Simchat Torah leads us to ask a simple question. Why the Jews? Why were we chosen to receive the Torah?

In one place in our tradition, we read a story of how God offered the Torah first to all the other nations, but they asked what was in it, and when God said: "Do not kill," the Ishmaelites said, uh, sorry God, but we live by the sword, maybe next time, okay? And when God told the Moabites, "Do not commit adultery," they respectfully replied that they, too, were not interested. Only when God approached the Jews did we reply without even asking about the contents "Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hearken."

Why the Jews? Why did we receive the Torah? Because everyone else had their chance, and they blew it.

But in answer to the very same question, there is yet another story. There is a different tradition that tells us how, at Mt. Sinai, God lifted the mountain up out of the ground, held it above the people who were trembling
below, and simply said: "If you accept my Torah, it will go well for you, but if you do not, this will be your burial place." To which the wise Israelites replied: "Everything that God has said, we will do and we will hearken."

Both of these stories answer the same question. Both are reactions to a question the comes from reading in between the lines of the Torah.

But with both stories, we learn as much about the writers of the story as we do about the Bible. The first was a chauvinist, or, at the very least, lived at a time when the non Jews around him (I assume it was a man) were behaving with violence and sexual immorality.

By the time the second story was written, however, the writer assumed that there were no inherent differences between Jews and non Jews; we happened to be the ones God chose to receive the Torah, but not by any inherent qualification on our part.

Another classical example. "And God built Eve from the rib of the man." Why the rib? To teach (as with one interpretation) that women are like bone, hard and inflexible? Or to show that a woman is from the side of a man not the head to rule above him, nor the foot to serve below him, but the side, to walk together, hand in hand and side by side, equal in every way.

In these different reactions to the very same verse, we can guess the gender, the inclinations and the general time period (ancient vs. quite modern) of the person doing the reacting.

In studying the Torah, we do not learn one single truth. We bring ourselves to the text, and we see ourselves reflected in it. It is not just talking to us. It is talking about us, and through us.

In studying the Torah, we discover ourselves.

That is precisely the goal of Jewish study. It is something that the synagogues in our community offer in a high quality way: the opportunity to peer into the past and discover the concerns of the present, to look at our
ancestors and see...that they are us and we are them on down through an endless chain that links and binds the generations together.

It is why our tradition teaches that "talmud torah k'neged kulam; studying Judaism is equal to all of the other commandments and customs of our tradition combined...because it will lead to them all."

The opportunities are there. The windows into the past and into our own souls are open for us. In each Bet Midrash, in each house of study, in a path that leads through the classrooms and the chapels, the libraries and social halls there waits for you...the Mirror in the Ark. And we...we who bring ourselves to study, we who see our own souls in the spaces between the words, we are, indeed, the Faces in the Mirror.

2010-06-06T17:35:00.000-07:00

"Dinosaurs Outside Ice-skating"

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

One day when he was around two-and-a-half years old, when we were living in Buffalo, New York, my son Daniel looked up from something he was doing and announced with great enthusiasm: "Dinosaurs Outside Ice-skating!"

I have no earthly idea what prompted this definitive pronouncement. All I know is that he must have been, at that moment, looking at the world a very different way than I was. And that it was going to take an awful lot of effort on my part to figure out -- if I could do so at all -- what it was that was going through his head.

I thought of this lesson shortly after hearing his comment, in the middle of a meeting in which it seemed like the different groups speaking were from different planets altogether.

The general subject was Church-State separation; the particular topic was an upcoming "National Day of Prayer" which had been planned for the City of Buffalo Common Council Chambers, in which groups were
called upon to come together for four hours, to put aside differences and share our common bond "in the body of Jesus."

Our "official" Jewish community was united in its response. Both the Jewish Federation and the American Jewish Committee representatives saw two problems from our point of view: first, the exclusive nature of the
gathering, since not all of us "true-blue" "real" Americans of us share a "common bond" in the "body of Jesus," and second, in the location of the gathering, four hours of time in the Common Council Chambers themselves. To our local representatives, and to the national contacts that these groups consulted, all of this seemed to be a pretty clear violation of the separation of church and state.

Now, I must say that many, many mainstream Protestant and Catholic organizations agreed with our objections, as did, of course, representatives of the Muslim and Hindu communities. At least one of the two issues had wide sympathy in these circles: such a gathering, held under the guise of a "National" Day of Prayer, should be inclusive, rather than exclusive. There was much less, although still significant, support for the notion that such a gathering, whose primary purpose was religious in nature, had no business
being held on government property. Individual, spontaneous and internal private prayer has never been disallowed in such settings; organized, public and communal worship in governmental settings has been much more problematic. (The gathering was, to much relief, but also some anger, moved out of the chambers and onto much more appropriate property at the last minute.)

What took me by surprise, I must confess, was the reaction of some segments of the African American community. While there were certainly those who had some sense of where the "other than" Christian community was coming from in our feelings, still there was a widespread sentiment that nobody
should be barred from any form of worship in any setting whatsoever. While I expected such an attitude from the something like the Christian Coalition, one of whose stated goals is to proclaim America a "Christian" country, the response from a community with whom we still very often find ourselves allied caught me by surprise. In our language, in our outlook, in our concerns, it was as if we were coming from two different worlds. And it looked like it was going to be pretty hard for each of us to really comprehend where the
other one was coming from.

But in inter-group relations, where we seem the most "alien" and "other," where we let our differences really come out, with love but honesty, with candor but calm, time, and work, talking, and trying, may yield good results in the end. Not agreement. But understanding of an other. Even, perhaps, appreciation of where someone very different from us is coming from.

I now know what I should have realized, perhaps, before. We look at the world in very different ways. For Jews, the separation from state-sanctioned prayer has been the deepest and most abiding basis of our freedom in this country. For African Americans in this country, for a very long time, prayer was the only freedom they had. Of course our attitudes towards the role of prayer in public life will differ. Even if we agree about many other areas of public policy.

Comprehension of a similar sort came to me several years earlier, before this incident, on the related topic of vouchers from private schools. After a direct conflict with some Roman Catholic officials on this issue in a previous community it which I lived, I sensed that we were ships passing in the night, that each one of
us was talking past the other, not really grasping the depth of the places which were the source of our positions. I appealed to a name I knew, a national Catholic expert on Jewish-Catholic dialog. He opened up a new world for me when he helped me look at the United States, for just a moment, through Catholic eyes.

It seems that one of the only actual pogroms in this country was, well, against Catholics. And the issue was over education. The place was Philadelphia, and the time was the middle of the nineteenth century. The
trigger event was a dispute over which version of the Bible would be used in a public school, a Catholic version or a Protestant version. And the anti-Catholic rhetoric grew so strong that, for the first and only occasion of which I am aware, a local Catholic bishop banned people from coming to services the following Sunday, in fear for their safety.

Just like the recent issue in Buffalo, the particulars of the incident are less important in the long run than what they reveal about the underlying experience of the group. It seems to me, as I look at the situation now,
that Jews and Catholics encountered an identical problem -- Protestant influence in the public schools -- and reacted in quite different ways. We Jews went to court, to create a neutral ground, an appropriately level
playing field for all American citizens in the schools which we "own" in common. The Catholic Church, as an institution, went out and created an entire and separate school system, in which Catholic values could flourish
untrammeled by the dominance of others. A similar problem, with two distinctly different solutions. No wonder Jews and Catholics, by and large, strongly disagree on the issue of using public money for parochial education.

I remain a strong opponent of vouchers for private schools. But I have a deeper, gut-level feeling for why this is such an important issue for some people than I ever did before. I am grateful to a patient and wise Catholic
teacher, who opened my eyes to his world.

When we try to look at the world through the eyes of another, we never know what we are going to find. That is because people who are different from us are, well, different. But it is a journey of discovery that is
almost always worth the effort. Not because we are going to agree on what should be done. But because we will come to know each other better. And in the process, without a doubt, we will learn more about ourselves.

I still don't know what my son meant when he said "Dinosaurs Outside Ice-skating." But I tried, for a moment, to see the world through his eyes. I discovered not agreement, but excitement and wonder and delight.

And Daniel. Somehow Daniel saw something of the world through my eyes as well.

He still shares this delicious sentence from time to time. But then he will pause, giggle, and add two more words. "That's silly!" he says. And somehow, despite not knowing all of what is going on in each other's heads, we have found a way to bridge a gap. Somehow, we understand a little bit about each other, and ourselves.

2004-01-02T10:45:00.000-08:00

A World Ablaze With Splendor:

Or: What's a berakhah?

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

It is, perhaps, my least favorite joke in Jewish life. There it is, plain and simple for the eye to see, included in any collection of Jewish humor. Only I don't think it's very funny. I think it's really offensive.

A Jewish man is very proud of his new Mercedes. [Or Hummer. Or whatever else the most fashionable and expensive vehicle might be at the time.] But he wants to use it in the "right" way. He wants to know his conspicuous consumption is somehow "alright" in the eyes of God. So he goes to an Orthodox rabbi, and he asks in all seriousness: "Rabbi, what's the berakha [a blessing] for a Mercedes? And the Orthodox rabbi answers: "What's a Mercedes?" He repeats the procedure with the same response, from a Conservative rabbi. The trip to a Reform rabbi, however, ellicits a different answer. "Hmn." The Reform rabbi says. "What's a berakha?"

Now, the problems with this so-called humor should be obvious. Just in case they are not, however, I will share with you one recent real-life experience: one of the highlights, for me, of our Confirmation class trip to New York City is always the Erev Shabbat (Friday night) service we spend at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, the [unaffiliated but once Conservative] hip, hopping, happening bastion of liberal Jewish spirituality on the upper west side of Manhatten. In the midst of the thousand worshippers every Friday night, there are invariably people there we know, and did not expect to see. Last fall, however, a woman we did not know came up to our kids, was very friendly, and asked what kind of synagogue we came from. The tenth graders told her they were from a Reform synagogue and without missing a beat she said, in what she must have thought was a helpful and encouraging tone: "Oh, well, try to hum along."

But this is not the month I want to write about issues of Jewish literacy, or the perceptions and misperceptions of one movement of another. Nor do I want to go into the images of materialism and piety raised by the question of "what's a Mercedes?" No, but there is a new twist on an old joke I want to take. I want to take the punch line seriously. I want to ask: "what's a berakha?"

Now it seems like a simple question. The blessings are such a routine, and superficially familiar part of Jewish life. So many of us have the image in our head (although the name may vary) of an MC-DJ at a wedding or a Bar/t Mitzvah bash announcing the "motzi" with great fanfare and faux familiarity: "And now, Uncle Itzy will come forward and bless the bread."

But things are not so simple. Whole books have been written on the first six words of the berakha formula alone, and they only scratch the surface of what can be said on the topic. More immediately, there are least two immediate problems with the Uncle Itzy image. Both have to do with language and the way language is used. First: we almost automatically translate the word "berakha" as "blessing." "Blessing," in English, implies something good. But there are many, many berakhot in Jewish life. One of them, in fact, is a berakha on hearing terrible news, the first words recited on hearing of the death of a loved one. In my book, then, the word can't quite mean "blessing." It is, then, something at once more slippery, and more profound. It is an acknowledgement, an awareness, what one of my teachers calls "an awakening" to something beyond the superficial, something "more," something extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary. The rote berakha is robbed of its potential power: said with actual intention, the words of this formula are a gateway to spirituality, a breathtakinig awareness of amazement found in the very face of the familiar.

The second problem is with the phrase "bless the bread." And to see why this is a problem is a bit complicated.

Any interpretation of Jewish tradition involves operation on many layers at once. (This is true of any interpretation of any text which serves as the foundation for a community's life, as, for example, a Constitution. You find the exact same kinds of arguments and schools of thought about how to interpret the Constitution as you do about how to interpret Torah.) Sometimes, the rabbinic (by which we mean "Talmudic era") layer will take two Biblical passages which might have been originally unrelated, fling them together, "find" a problem, and procede to solve the problem with new and creative thinking.

One of the clearest examples relates to the case of the realm of divine and human areas of authority. There is one verse in one Psalm, read out loud in English in the old Union Prayer Book, which states: "The Earth is the Lord's, and the heavens above." There is another verse, usually sung in Hebrew, which claims that: "the heavens belong to God, but the Earth God has given to human beings."

Now this is only a problem at the rabbinic layer, which assumes a consistency and infinite applicability in the Biblical text which the writers of these Psalms probably never envisioned themselves. But that is the beauty of Jewish interpretation: to see even more than was meant, and to read that depth of meaning into our lives.

This also seems like the kind of argument that asks about angels dancing on the head of a needle. But the implications are important; hidden in the folds of this semantic discussion (and a similar seemingly arcane argument about whether heaven was created first or earth and heaven were created together) is the question of whether our spiritual lives must trump every other aspect of our existence, or whether there is a balance between the mundane and the holy, the ordinary and the extraordinary.

And how did the rabbis of old resolve this apparent contradiction. In the following way. The first verse (the one where God owns everything) applies before we say a berakha; the second (where God stays "up there" and we get this world) applies afterwards.

This is an amazing reading! Uncle Itzy doesn't "bless" the bread at all! Everything is blessed; everything we encounter and experience is holy. And nothing belongs to us at all. Unless. And until. We are aware of that reality. We acknowledge it. We utter an appreciation for it. We ask permission to use it!

Uncle Itzy isn't making the bread holy at all. If anything he is desacralizing it; removing it from God's realm, and bringing it into our own.
What's a berakha? What is the power, in a formula of six ancient words? These words are the keys to Jewish spirituality. This approach unlocks for us the secret realms of appreciation, acknowledgement, and amazement. It wakes us up to the miracle in the midst of the mundane, the extraordinary in the assumed. They are words of simple politeness, and permission. And we know anew that in all the world around us, in every encounter, in every experience, in every event is the potential for something beyond what it seems to be.

We live with layers of meaning, with the apparent and the surface, and the teasing possibility of much more once the layers are stripped away. We live amidst the holy, in a world ablaze with splendor, if we but open our eyes, and our mouths. We have but to see it, and to say it. Ask, and it shall be yours.

Not the Mercedes, perhaps. But the glory, the "rightness," and life the way it can be.
Next time I hear that joke, maybe I'll be proud, instead of upset. Proud, for being able to ask the question beyond the rote and the routine: what is a berakha, anyway?

2002-10-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

Chaos Theory:

Reflections on Life in the Sights of a Sniper

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Another time, in another place. I remember meeting with a man who was addicted to gambling. There were ink stains on his fingers, and a squint in his eye: years of reading the fine print in the paper, looking, he told me, for "the pattern." It had to be there, he was convinced, some meaningful set of data, some winning formula that would allow him to extrapolate and translate the victors of the past to winnings in his bets.

I thought of this man again in recent days. I am reminded of him as I watch the police in my county, the investigators in my back yard, the criminologists in the next neighborhood frantically scramble to solve this puzzle, and relieve us all of the death-dealing delusional psychopath known as the serial sniper. For it has to be there: a pattern, a predictability, some sense of meaning in the midst of this madness. There is a sense of grim determination: maybe we'll catch him by luck, it seems to say, but we can grab him for sure if we can only use our minds, and tease out a rational sense of what is coming next.

But there is no pattern. There is no predictability. And there is no sure fire winning formula we can use to win this game of chance, this random roulette.

It is a primal human need, this search for meaning. The very act of creation, detailed in the first chapter of the Torah, the story we tell of ourselves, is the imposition of order, upon a watery and formless mess. Only in Genesis, it is God who brings order. And the madman in our midst -- is claiming precisely the same identity.

The search for meaning is depicted, as well, in one of the best existential templates of our time, that television program appropriately called "Get Smart." For there, the enemy was everyone, and the enemy had a name. The enemy is "Chaos." And the forces of goodness and humanity and meaning and order went by the name of "Control."

Funny, that Control was a government agency. Fact and fiction blend together, but the goal remains the same. What would we give up of chaos, for a renewed sense of control? And is Big Brother watching, and waiting, for the moment when we reach that point?

We're getting e-mails once again from friends in Israel. Once again, as after September 11th, they want to know if we're OK.

Are we OK? The bus stop was deserted this morning, until the moment the bus pulled up. Then, some kids appeared out of the cars they had been waiting in. Some. About half of those who should have been there.

Are we OK? Children are asking why the can't go outside. Gas stations are shadows of their former selves, and its a really good time to get a table at that too-popular restaurant you've been wanting to go to. We tell our kids too little. Or we tell our kids too much. And when the lights are out, and the blankets pulled up, we wonder what to tell ourselves.

A friend said: well, it's worse in Israel. Another friend disagreed. Because there, at least you know why. And still we search for answers, and for meaning.

So here is my meaning for the moment, a lesson I have learned from watching the plumes of the Pentagon, and learned anew from living in the shadow of a sniper. Since September 11th, and again now, at every opportunity, I have been trying to convey to people -- this is what it means, to live in Israel. Now is the time to say: we are all Israelis.

But yesterday, with the roadblocks and the searches, with the disruption to everyone's lives in the search for a single person, in the delays and inconvenience and indignity and uncertainty, in the inability to just get to work on time, yesterday the Educator at our congregation said something else. Yesterday she said: "Today, we are all Palestinians."

No pattern. No predictability. But an insight and an understanding, because that is what human beings do. This time the realization that a full picture requires us to look through both sides of the scope.

Life is a crap-shoot. The odds are still in our favor. But still we spend our time, afraid of the random, making sense out of madness, trying with all our might to be gods ourselves, imposing order on chaos. Creating a world which feels safe once again.

2002-08-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

Reparations

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

We are about to enter our season of repentence. We speak about teshuvah, the Hebrew word for repentence, which comes from the root sh.u.v., meaning to turn. To return. We speak very often in Jewish life about mending the world, repairing it, restoring it, returning to the way it was.

The Torah itself coveys a bold vision a radical concept of restoration. It is the notion of the Jubilee Year, the radically egalitarian levelling of distinctions, the "return," every fifty years, of the land to its "original" (Israelite) holders. However impossible the idea proved to be in practice, the ideal is there, for all to see -- that over time, inequities arise, injustice sets in, the world goes wrong. It is up to us, time after time, to attempt to set it right again.

Julie and I have a close friend in Buffalo who lives on Grand Island (the place in between the two bridges you have to go over to get to Niagara Falls, if you are coming from the United States side). Never mind that Grand Island had an interesting role to play in Jewish history -- it was once proposed (by Mordecai Manual Noah, I believe) as a potential site for a Jewish national homeland, Israel-by-the-Falls, if you will. Its current claim to fame is as the source of a lawsuit by a Native American tribe who, it turns out, might well own the island. Our friend who lives on the island has an interesting conflict of interest: she is an attorney, and she happens to represent the tribe... in their claims against her home. It is considered quite unlikely by all involved that the current residents of Grand Island would ever have to pack their bags and sadly drive off over one of those bridges. But the claim is in the courts. And justice is being sought.

On my return from vacation this summer, I turned on the radio, and heard a news report about a demonstration in Washington that I had missed. While I was on Cape Cod, coming close to Plymouth Rock where (white) pilgrims first landed on these shores, here at home there was a rally on behalf of Reparations for African-Americans. Compensation for the evil, the ill, and, indeed, for the financial loss inflicted by the experience of slavery.

Now, I know very little about this topic. I know it is a growing debate within the African American community. But for reasons of my own, I find the subject to be of great interest, for the questions it raises, and for its implications for all of us.

My first reaction to the claim that payment should be made today for the experience of slavery over a century ago, I must confess, is slight personal indignation. What did I have to do with slavery? When African Americans were brought here, my ancestors were all getting chased by Cossacks. There's an injustice here, yes, but don't look at me.

That reaction fades with a moment's thoughts. For in coming here, and in becoming citizens of this great land, my grandparents took on the narrative of this country. In becoming American, they embraced its story. And its history. That history, now, is my heritage, even as my direct descendants were Europeans at the time. That is what it means, to join a people.

My second thought about reparations for slavery is to think of the link -- explicitly made by many advocates -- with reparations for the Holocaust. How are we seen, we who demand that justice be done for the horrors of a generation ago, in the eyes of others? Are we seen as crusaders for the right and true and good? For restoring a scale that was tipped, a life that was torn away? Or are we seen as greedy, and grubbing? As: if they (we) can do this, why not we (them)? Does it make a difference, really, that in the case of the Holocaust we are talking about living memory, and its immediate single generation that follows, and that in the case of slavery it is an older wound? What is the psychic statue of limitations on the suffering of a people?

And that issue leads to my final question. How can we measure the impact inflicted across the generations by a heritage of evil? It strikes me as devilishly hard. Not that I put much stock in a counter-argument: I just heard of some study claiming that the descendants of the slaves -- not the slaves themselves, but their descendants -- were probably far better off in their situation here, now, in this country, than they would have been had their ancestors remained free, in Africa. I find this argument profoundly offensive, even if it might somehow be true. Shoulda, woulda, coulda -- its a weak argument to begin with. We can never know for sure what might have been. (This is as offensive to me as the report a couple of years ago arguing that the crime rate was down... because of abortion, that a certain percentage of future criminals had simply...not been born. What a horrible assertion, to a Jewish tradition that believes in the dignity and potential -- and free-will -- of every individual human being.)

No, I believe that there is something in the African American experience that is different from that of any other group. They are the only group in this land of immigrants to be brought here against their will. That has to have an effect that lingers, an impact on the very vision and dream of what this country can be, an impact that might well be felt to this very day. How to measure it, how to calculate it, what to do about it are questions beyond my ability to fathom at the moment. But the issue itself, I reluctantly conclude, is a legitimate question.

We read in the book of Deuteronomy: "tzedek, tzedek tirdof, l'ma'an tichiyeh. Justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may live." Why, the sages ask, is the word repeated? Why the redundency? After all, if God wrote the Torah, as the tradition claims, every word, every nuance is filled with cosmic meaning. So, the word "justice" appears twice. There has to be a reason.

Many answers are given. Justice once, in civil cases, but be extra cautious, we are to learn from this, in capital cases. Or: justice, whether it is to your benefit, or to your loss. Or this: justice we must pursue, though we would hide from the question, duck the answer, shrink from the implications. Justice when it seems to us the right thing to do, and justice when someone else raises the issue.

I don't have any answers in this particular case. I just know what our tradition teaches: it is incumbent upon us to look each other in the eye. To examine the heart. To look at the way the world was, and the way it should be. To return, and repent, and repair.

The debate has been joined. The case is open. The conclusion has yet to come.

2002-05-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

Let He Who Is Without Sin...

Plain Talk on a Tough Topic --

Comments on the Crisis in the Catholic Church

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Once again, on an important topic, I have been silent too long.

I have been silent, out of a fear that I would paint with too broad a brush, that the splashes of paint would splatter in ways I could not control, indeed, that the taint would hit too close to home.

During the entire duration of the Clinton sex scandal, I was silent, because of whispers and rumors and gossip about various improprieties in the congregation that I served at the time. How could I address issues of sexual morality from the pulpit... when the topic was already abuzz on too many tongues?

And now. This year. I have been silent as scandal has enveloped our brothers and sisters of another faith. Silent, because there is no community without its own memory of pain. And silent, because how is it possible to comment on the pain of a neighbor, without being prurient, or smarmy, or simply inappropriate?

Silent. But I can be silent no more.

Not when corrupt clergy act to suppress lay voices, to close off any outside involvement, to circle the wagons, and to squash dissent.

Not when reports surface of a new legal strategy, to counter-attack those who come forward with claims, to question their motives, to undermine their credibility, to ask victims if they "liked it," to sue parents for leaving their children in the care of those the church itself claimed the parents could trust.

Not when the issue is transformed, from an internal scandal, to a matter of justice and morality.

Not when I think there are lessons to be learned which will reach across the boundaries of faith, and touch our lives as well.

And so, with great trepidation, and with what I hope will be some sensitivity, I turn my attention in this Jewish column, to the Catholic Church.

My friends, I have a confession to make. It is this. The American Catholic Church... fascinates me. I think it goes back to one of the occasions on which this popular pope visited the United States. I read at the time that 87% or so of American Catholics love and revere their pope... but only 18% felt the slightest compulsion to actually do what he told them to do, in areas of human sexuality and personal autonomy. How uniquely American, I remember thinking: people are part of an organization that is thoroughly hierarchical... and they nevertheless pick and choose on their own, what they want to follow, and what they want to heed.

My interest in the Catholic Church grew in a more personal way when we moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. There, the only person in the whole community who my parents knew before I moved there, was a pretty powerful nun named Joan Chittester. Sister Joan is a scholar, an activist, and one of the most intensely intelligent people I have ever met. To meet her, to work with her, to get to know her, to call her a friend has been one of the great honors of my life. To watch her come out on 60 Minutes in favor of ordaining women, after the pope had just said, speaking ex cathedra, that the topic was not open for discussion, was to taste for just a moment the passion, the animating spirit in American Catholocism of today.

Or perhaps, of yesterday.

In Erie I also fought with a bishop, and got me to a nunnery. I tangled with the local diocese, after coming out against vouchers, receiving a letter from the bishop which treated me like I was an errant cleric in his personal employ. The letter did end with an offer to get togehter to discuss the matter. I pursued the opening, only to be invited to dine with said bishop at his residence... on the following Friday night!

After straightening all that out, I spent one of the best weeks of my life with 150 women. I was honored to be the Scholar In Residence for the Annual Retreat of the Benedictine nuns in Erie. (See my column "Get Thee To A Nunnery.") I must have taught something, but I got more far out of the experience than I could possibly have given, and learned about devotion and commitment, community and love, in deep and profound ways.

So the American Catholic Church fascinates me. I have learned of the diversity in its midst, the depth of love in which it is held, indeed, I have even learned of the special bonds of shared experience which unite Jews and Catholics even when we are propelled to the opposite conclusions about important issues. To cite just one example, Jews and Catholics came to this country and found a similar problem. That problem was Protestant control of public schools. Both Jews and Catholics addressed the issue. It is just that we did so in different ways. Catholics created a vast and wide-ranging private school system, for their values, for their children. As Jews, we reacted in a different way. We went to the courts, to create a level playing field on the grounds of American civic and communal life. Opposite answers, but locked together as reactions to the very same feeling of exclusion. We share a hidden history, and an experiential bond.

This year, these days, with each new revelation, with each news cycle, I cringe anew. I feel the pain, of too many good people. I feel the sadness, of a shattered trust. I join in the anger, at abuse of power. But, above all... I see now more clearly with each passing day the elephant in the room, the aunt in the attic, the dark and sinister subtext which no one seems willing to talk about.

The real reason I have to speak out about the scandal in the Catholic Church at this time is that I believe there is something more subtle -- and more sinister -- going on than the corruption of a spiritual institution, the self-defence of a religious bureacracy.

I think I can see the root cause of the problem facing our neighbors in faith. "They" are not going to like what I have to say. And neither are many of "us," either.

2002-03-31T14:31:00.000-08:00

I Hate Your Gut

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

Bombs go off in restaurants and grocery stores in Israel, teenage girls find themselves with such rage and so little hope that they cheerfully put an end to their own lives, Arafat is surrounded but somehow personally inviolate (that man has nine lives; he once surivived an airplane crash -- mechanical failure, of all things, and he walked away). Anything we might say today about "hamatzav" ("the situation," which is apparantly what some Israelis have been calling this unprecedented string of attacks and fear and tension in their lives) will be outpaced by events tomorrow.

And our own lives march on, in our families, in our community, in our congregation, almost in disconnect mode, Kafka-esque to those with an eye on both home and homeland.

An early Zionist leader once asserted, correctly in my opinion, that "Judaism will be Zionist, or it will not be at all." Israel plays a central role in our identity as Jews, in how we see ourselves, and in how others see us. Whether we welcome it or not. Whether we acknowledge it or not. Our fate and our faith are tied up with what happens on a distant shore. As Americans schooled in the notion of near absolute individual liberty we may be loathe to admit this, but our future as a people, as a community, is as linked to what happens far away as it is in our own hands. We are almost as dependent on the decisions and actions of others as it is on the choices we make ourselves.

And yet our silence -- indeed, my own silence -- has been deafening. Is it a distancing of destiny? Are we forgetting how bound up we are with what goes on in Israel? We have completely put away the active anti-Zionism of our pre-World War One Reform Jewish past. But do we now witness a creeping non-Zionism, a simple indifference? Is it possible that we do not think that what happens "over there," matters very much to us, over here.

Perhaps there is one other possibility. It is helplessness. The fact that we simply do not know what to say.

Oh, plenty of American Jews do know what to say. They say it at the top of their lungs, and spend time shouting at each other over perceived policy differences. The other day I heard someone refer to Americans for Peace Now, a Jewish, pro-Israel, pro-peace process group, as traitors he wished were dead, and that he would rather deal with a non-Jewish anti-semite than a Jewish one any day. The rhetoric of
those who are involved is so shrill, the words are so hot because the stakes are so high: each side (pro-Oslo and anti-Oslo) thinks the other is playing fast and loose with the very survival of the Jewish state. How quickly that argument descends from passionate disagreement, to questioning the patriotism of dissent.

But I would argue that those who are not shouting right now, some of us, are silent not from disengagement but out of sheer frustration. We do not know what to say. And we do not know what to do.

We read in the Torah that Moses, confronted on a number of occasions with a problem he could not solve himself (e.g., the ridiculously radical request of the daughters of Zelophead that women be allowed to inherit land, when there was no male offspring), uttered a great and powerful response. "I don't know," he said. "I'll go ask."

But then Moses had a luxury we do not. It was direct communication with the Creator of the Universe. (I am a religious person. I do believe that God speaks to us as human beings. The difference between me and Moses -- and, indeed, between me and modern day fundamentalists of any flavor -- is that while I believe that, clearly, God speaks to us, they believe that God speaks clearly. I believe, quite differently, that all of our lives are a struggle, or a journey, to figure out what it is that God wants of us.)

And so, in the midst of uncertainty, frustration, with pain and anger, still, I want to share a couple of my thoughts on hamatzav, the situation in the Middle East, as it stands as I write these words. Knowing it will be out of date already by the time you read this.

This is "a time to be strong." The only problem is: Jewish history and tradition give us two very different models of what being strong means. There is the model, long supressed, of the fighting Jew. Judah Maccabee. Simon Bar Giora. Bar Kochba. Ben Gurion. Then there is the model of the Talmud. "Who is strong?" we read in Pirkei Avot. "One who conquors his instincts." Where response is not just reaction. It might equally well be restraint. (To muddy the matter even more: a tale is told of Sigmund Freud. He was told by his father that once, a bully had knocked off his hat, pushed him off the sidewalk and said: "Get out of the sidewalk, Jew." Freud asked his father what he did. The answer crushed the future inventor of analysis. His father said: "I stepped into the gutter, picked up my hat, and went on my way." Years later, confronted by three antisemitic bullies, Freud himself chased them away with his stick. But Freud -- and not his father -- is the one who lived at a time when he had to flee his country.)

But there is a danger in restraint. There is a law of unintended consequences. I believed at the time, two years ago, that the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was the right thing to do. It saved lives. But. The sight of retreating Israeli soldiers is cited throughout the Palestinian population as the inspiration for this current intifada. What was the right thing to do for ourselves nevertheless sent the wrong message to others.

The mathematics of the conflict remain the same as they did two years, and twenty years ago. If Israel is to remain a strong, viable, democratic and Jewish state, it cannot continue to rule over so many Palestinians who want their own government. If it does so, it will either cease to be Jewish (through a Muslim demographic "victory in the bedroom"), or cease to be a democracy. To the vast majority of the Jews in Israel and around the world, either alternative is unacceptable. So a way must be found to give some of this territory back.

Right now, there is no one to whom we can give this territory back. Arafat has proven again and again to be duplicitous beyond belief. He has had enough opportunity to do the right thing. But as Abba Eban once said about the Palestinians, noting that they had and still have perhaps the worst leadership in the world, "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Our own leadership is somewhat suspect. While there can not be any moral equivalency between an obstructionist and a murderer, between a settler and a slaughterer, between Sharon and Arafat, nevertheless I believe... that Prime Minister Sharon has played every card, pushed every button, ordered gratuitious humiliation and acted with enough provocation that the Palestinians have reacted to him, and not in a way that was in their own interest. One might say that he has brilliantly revealed their true colors, by "mild" pressure. The only problem with that statement is... that it might be true.

In other words, sometimes that which is "justified" is not always "wise."

This is an existential crisis that Israel faces not because it can lose in the field of battle, but because it can loose in the face of slick operatives and gullible American audiences with short memories and a penchant for easy answers.

The other day I spoke to a large gathering of Fulbright Scholars, graduate students from around the world, who had come together in Washington, D.C., for a seminar on Tolerance and Pluralism as American Values in the Wake of the Tragedy of September 11. There, on the panel, with a Protestant, a Catholic, a Muslim, and me, where we were supposed to be speaking about American values (as Durban was supposed to be about racism), the Middle East overwhelmed the program. (Are the Palestinians the only people in the world who are suffering from anything???)

The Muslim speaker was terrific. He was warm, charismatic, friendly, and polished. He lives near me; he is already a friend of Rabbi Serotta's, and I look forward to getting to know him better.

He represented Islam well, with a human face, and a humane heart. But when asked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he sounded so "reasonable" I just about cried. He revived the call for a bi-national state. With equality under the law. Liberty and justice for all. Freedom and democracy, with no one religion favored over any other. Such nice values. And everyone applauded.

So I took the microphone next. And I decided to call a spade a spade. Because, look. I think a Jew who is going to criticize a Muslim state had better be willing to apply those same values, and those same criterion of criticism, to Israel. And (call me a radical) I also think that a Muslim who is going to say that Israel should live up to certain standards of behavior and reflect certain values... had better be willing to stand for the same things in Muslim countries.Justice and democracy, freedom and equality, with no religion favored over any other. Sounds so wonderful. But if you call for those things in Israel, you'd better be willing to demand them... in Iran. And Iraq. In Saudi Arabia. And Afghanistan.

Because if you are not willing to do so, then you are saying, by that, that all the other religions in the world have a right to have lands -- more than one apiece, by the way -- in which their religion can have a favored status, but one religion in the world cannot have that.If that is what you are saying, I told these Fulbright Scholars, then you are supporting oppression and predjudice and bigotry and hate, rather than freedom and democracy, and, that is what you just applauded.

There was a stunned silence. I know. Speakers usually complement and coddle their audiences. They don't challenge them. They don't ask them to look at themselves in the mirror.

Israel is losing the PR war. And we are all in trouble because of it.

We need a radical change of heart. I'm sure that I am no more qualified to be a spokesperson for Israel... than those appointed by the Israeli government (although given how they often come across, I am perhaps no less qualified, either.) I just know that we need some new thinking, to tell our story... and to solve this problem.

Two months ago I attended a different forum in downtown Washington. Hosted by the Brookings Institute, it was a forum on Peace in the Middle East, featuring former Israeli minister Yossi Beilin, and a current minister with the Palestinian Authority.

Someone asked the Palestinian minister what he thought about Israel, and he said something like this: "Look, you are asking me to change my gut. I cannot change my gut. I wish it were not there. But..." and he went on to sound perfectly reasonable about co-existence and justice and the like.

At least Minister Rabbo was honest. But, Ramallah, we have a problem. You don't want to change your gut? Well, I hate your gut. And yes, I do want you to change your gut. Because unless you do, we will never, ever trust each other. And when you do... and when we do... and when we do it at the same time... when you change your gut... then I'll change mine.

Spilling your guts out isn't about therapy in Israel. It's life and death. And hatred is the heart of the problem.

Now why can't the world see what I see? And who in the world can we get, that can make them see it this way?

Ten plagues came upon Egypt. The final plague was one of violence. Like everything else, we can read the message more than one way. First, you can say, that when all else fails to achieve justice, blood will spill. The sword comes into the world, the Talmud says, because of justice denied, and justice delayed. Or, with President Kennedy: those who make nonviolent revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

But the other way to tell the tale is this. Nine plagues came first. They tried everything else. Everything else. Have we?

Just a few of my thoughts, in the midst of a violent and bloody Passover, an an armchair quaterback, in the game of the Jewish future.

2002-03-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

"When The World Was A Kid"

Finding the right words to help each other

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, MD

On the way in to school last week, my five-year old son Benjamin asked me the following question. "Daddy," he said in all seriousness, "what is your favorite animal... from when the world was a kid?"

When the world was a kid! I nearly drove off the road, trying not to laugh. What a wonderful way of phrasing a question about the early days of the earth. It was his way of initiating a conversation about dinosaurs. But it was a creative and deliciously unself-conscious way around the fact that he just didn't have the right words, for what he wanted to say.

For so many of us, in so many situations, there are times when we are not as creative as we need to be. And when we are painfully self-conscious. There are the many moments in our lives when we want to help, to hug, to hold, to reach out to someone else... but we just don't know what to say.

I just completed one of the most powerful experiences of my rabbinate. It was a four-week, Thursday evening support group, sponsored and organized by the Washington Jewish Healing Network, for those struggling with infertility. Few people in my new congregation are aware of the fact -- and who would know, to look at our five-memer family now -- although long-time readers of this column certainly are, that this is a road we walked for too many years. I remember the feelings. I remember the pain. And I wanted to do something, to give back, to offer some comfort and connections to anyone struggling with such a deep and soul-shaking issue. Or even, in a world beyond words, to just help create a space, for those who wanted, to be together.

The feelings that the members of that group shared are raw, and honest, and profoundly powerful. As I have written elsewhere, there are so many dimensions to the issue of infertility: Married couples who cannot conceive. Singles searching for partners, who yearn for children nonetheless. Gays and lesbians in committed relationships who would make wonderful parents if only they and the world could agree on a way. There are the too common tales of medical hoops, invasive procedures, intimacy set by the clock and not the heart. The monthly wait. The horrible trauma when we hear the beat of life at last... and it does not hold.

But if there was one experience these couples spoke about which I remembered the best, it was of how frequently we come upon the sheer inadequacy of words.

What does one say, when a friend is in pain? Too much? Too little? How can it possibly be just the right thing? Think about something you have gone through, a difficult time in your life. Wasn't it the case -- in any event, it was for me -- that of all the well-meaning support in the world, 99 people said just exactly the worst thing they could say. And one gem of a friend in a hundred hit it right on the head.

What's the wrong thing to say, to someone in pain? There are so many ways to blow it! Oh, it must be happening for a reason; you must have done something to contribute to this. Job's friends, offering explanation above love. For infertility: oh, just relax, it'll happen. ("Just relax!" An oxymoron, and two of the least helpful words in the English language. In the entire history of humanity has that phrase ever achieved its intended result?) About a miscarriage: Oh, it's nature's way.

Indeed, the list of ways in which we can insert our foot in our mouths seems endless. And no one is immune. Just the other day I approached a woman who was about to begin teaching a class, who I know is waiting for important news, and referred to her being in limbo. I winced as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I know that I threw her off stride, that I broke into whatever space she needed to mentally get set for teaching. It is like people who ask how my mother is doing in her recovery from her stroke (better than once predicted, but still not at all what we want, so, generally, poorly I suppose), two seconds before I need to begin leading a service. Even if the sentiment is right, the timing was terrible.

The art of finding the right words is a delicate and difficult task. How often we shy away from reaching out, just because we do not know what to say. We care. But we don't want to intrude. We are concerned. But we don't want to smother.

There is no single magic wand, for a healing touch. Indeed, by the time you read these words we will be approaching Pesach. (No! Not Pesach! We haven't even stopped buying hametz! Too early -- we're not even ready to get ready!) The Passover seder is the original CD-Rom, teaching at many different levels, with sights and sounds, only it adds touch and taste as well. (I say this as I am staring at the CD on my home computer, which is stuck, and stubbornly refusing to open, and while I have been searching for the right magic formula to use --"Speak 'Friend,' and Enter?" -- I confess to having uttered a few choice words which were probably the wrong thing to say.) At our seder tables we will read the story of the Four Children.

For those of you less familiar with the story, there are four children who ask questions at the Passover table. One does so out of a sincere search for knowledge. Another is snide, and mocking. Another is simple, and straightforward. A fourth has open eyes of wonder, but no words to ask at all. Our responses to each of the children -- the wise, the wicked, the innocent, and the one who does not know to ask -- differ; to each according to their ability, to each according to their need.

We know that there are different tacks to take, depending on the personality, the mood, the inclination, of the one we want to help. There is no "one-size-fits-all" way of caring. Indeed, it is possible -- probable -- that no one person can adequately respond to all the needs around him or her. One style is too in-your-face. Another too distant. What is a comfort to some is an invasion of space to another.

But space, in some ways, is what being helpful is about. In a world which does not often support reflection, to find a way to help people... be themselves.

In the end, perhaps, there are no right words. There is just a way... of being there. A stance, and not an answer. A shoulder, and not a solution.

When called to the mountain, Moses was told to ascend, "v'heyai sham, and be there." There is a power in presence, that precedes or transcends any particular position we might take with words. In pain and suffering, for help and healing, we are called to "be there."

May we always provide a place... where time and space can meet. Where the deepest love we share offers a glimpse of eternity, and a window into the soul. And in the midst of the world of words, a place where we can hear, and heal, through the sound of silence.

Insights on life, from a time when the world was a kid.

2002-01-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

At Home With Hope

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

There is an old Yiddish aphorism. It goes something like this: "Man plans, and God laughs."

We had such wonderful plans, this past summer. Such a sense that we were doing the right thing, that is would be great for our kids, to leave behind the frozen chosen (the Jews of the snow belt) in Buffalo and Erie, to move to Washington, which means, for me, after 22 years away, to "come home." With excitement and enthusiasm I accepted a position as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Shalom, in Chevy Chase, Maryland... not fifteen minutes from the home in which I grew up, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Not fifteen minutes from where my parents still live.

How blessed we were, to be able to be with family. How wonderful it would be, how great to have our children grow up near one set of grandparents.

And I'll be honest. I was really looking forward to my mother watching our children.

I never thought it would be the other way around.

Well, let me correct that. I guess I did know that the time would come, that it comes to all children, that the task of watching their parents falls onto their adult shoulders. But not this soon.

Three days before Yom Kippur, a month and a half after we moved to be with her, two months after her only granddaughter was born, my mother suffered a serious stroke.

Ironies abound. She was in the hospital at the time, for pneumonia, but it was overnight. And she was cured. And set to go home the next morning. So no one noticed. And we missed a window, to give her a new clot-busting drug.

She is the youngest of my children's four grandparents. And she was so very, very happy at the prospect of having those grandchildren close by.

We were told that she would never speak again. By now, in a nursing home and three months after the event, she has counted to fourteen, answered "yes" and "no" from time to time, sung along with "Happy Birthday," and managed to convey "I love you" to my brother and sister-in-law. She has held her granddaughter in her left arm. And we just don't know -- no one does -- how much she will recover. Or what the future holds.

Medicine is an art. It is not a science.

I hate doctors. I love doctors. I want to shoot the messenger.

A few reflections, if you will, of lessons learned along the way.

I wrote once (in a column called "Life and Death, Near and Far") that a rabbi once wondered out loud why we don't talk more about life and death issues. After all, it comes to all of us. The fear in the eyes of our family, the loss in the lives of our loved ones is a common theme we share with all human beings, with everyone who has ever been close to another human being. It is not a sacred calm, but the silence of the scared, that we don't talk to each other more -- much more -- about the beginning of life, and its end.

For years, as a rabbi, I have stood with people at times of trial and trouble, I have sat in hospital rooms, I have held people's hands. Now with the shoe on the other foot I feel at once both different...and the same. United with all those families I have seen in understanding, perhaps for the first time, what it means -- really, what it means -- for someone to take time out of their lives, and come to visit. How important it is, how much it means, to just be there. For the reminder of friendship, the comfort of connections, the fact that my mother has been a part of so many other peoples' lives is a very powerful feeling. There is a tradition in the Talmud: to visit the sick is to take away one-sixtieth of the person's illness. (It is progressive, not cumulative; otherwise we would just organize teams of sixty people to go visit everyone in the hospital and, poof, grab a cameraman, we'd be ready for televangelism with all the magic cures we could bring!) I don't know what the visit does for the sick person. But I can tell you what it means to the family in waiting. It helps. A lot.

So I feel a connection between my experience as a visitor, and one receiving visits.

And I feel a fraud and a hypocrite, and a total disconnect, at the very same time.

Years ago I heard someone disparage the ability of Catholic priests to be marriage counselors. How can they know what it is like? How can they know what someone is going through in a marriage?

I thought the comments cruel, and unfair. For I have known priests who are astonishing pastors, and great counselors. Priests as colleagues who I might go to, not in confession, but in friendship. I have always argued that you don't need to be exactly in someone's shoes to feel their pain, to understand what they are going through, to be able to help.

I still believe that. If it were not true that you did not need to go through the exact same situation to be helpful to a person in pain, then no one could ever help anyone other than themselves. We can understand, with a feeling heart, and an open mind. We can be there for each other.

Having said that... there is still a special bond that exists between those who are in the same boat. We cling to every story of a stroke victim, we listen for the nuance of differences, for the shred of connection, with the tales of improvements beyond predictions. The commonality of experience creates camaraderie... and envy. Comparison brings comfort and angst. Support groups, I suppose now, have a great capacity to help... and to harm.

Julie and I share something with those who struggled to have children. But we do not share everything. We got lucky. Not everyone does. You would not know our tale to look at us now. But when we hear of someone having trouble conceiving, there is a knowing look, a momentary connection, a nod to a fellow traveler on a familiar road.

So I suppose I have helped other people by being there for them. And at the same time, I have stood there trying to bring comfort, having no clue what the people I was with were going through. Not in the gut. Not in the innermost fears and sadness of the soul.

And I did not know how much I did not know what a miracle is. I pray for a miracle anyway. Every day.

I know I've been inconsistent in my needs, and in what I receive from others. Sometimes a hug helps. Other times it feels forced, imposed, too intimate. (And I am a "touchy-feely" kind of person; I have never shrunk from a hug before.) Sometimes what people say is helpful. Other times the same words bring on bitterness. "Oh, isn't it good that you moved here." Of course. I can't imagine what this would be like managing it from afar. But hey. This ain't what we moved here for! Sometimes I want to talk about it. More often, too many people asking drives me bananas. How can I possibly "get anything done," when everyone wants to know how my mother is. In the context of tasks versus caring, what does "getting something done" mean, anyway? Maybe the work at hand is the connection people are trying to make, rather than the pile of paper on my desk. But maybe getting to the paper on my desk is the only thing that keeps me going.

The one really useful thing I believe I have consistently shared with families going through a trauma is to allow for the fact that different people in the family will react in different ways, at different times, that roles will shift, that the shifts can be sudden, and jarring, and that the emotional needs of different members of the family will be different at different times, and may bump up against each other.

It is not just in the face of death. Even in looking at a devastating illness.

To me, the comes in the question of optimism. How upbeat should we be? Who is "naive?" Who is "realistic?" Who is using labels, when we just don't know what will be. How much of pessimism is fear of getting hurt? Of being disappointed.

How can I bring comfort to my mother, to be helpful to her, when so much of what I see is what is not there, rather than what is? It is a whole new way to use language, yes... but a whole new way to use my eyes. And my heart.

A task calls, and it is beyond my grasp. I know what needs to be done. I am just not there yet. I know what I would want to say to others. What I would wish for them. To live with the gray. The mystery. The ambiguity. To hold on to the fact that we cannot know what will be, and to live with uncertainty. To somehow, some way, try to be at home with hope.

It's hard. It's very hard.

Eil na, r'fah na lah.

Oh, God, heal her please.

And heal all of us, of broken bodies, or broken dreams. Whose great plans shatter on the shore of a different reality. All of us. For we are all there, at the moment of truth, at the borderline of existence, the twilight of eternity, all of us, at one point, or another, on the journey of our lives.

2001-09-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

First Response:
September 12, 2001

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

We are all still in an almost surreal state of suspended animation.

Our hearts go out, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, the slaughtered and the sundered, their families, friends and loved ones, the wounded who will recover, and those who were not scratched whose wounds will never heal. All this, a communal condolence, while not even knowing if we are to be counted among the group in personal mourning. For we do not know the final numbers, and the names we wait to hear. Even if I had not just moved back to the Washington area, all of us, do we not, know someone who

might have been in the Pentagon or, perhaps much more likely, someone who worked in or near, or had reason to stop in the Twin Towers? With profound apologies to the West Coast, I simply assume everyone has personal connections to Washington and New York. If they are not the center of the universe (a claim also made by the book stand in the center of Harvard Yard), the are the center of the American world. Or at least, of my American world.

How to respond? How to begin? Where to start? An emptiness opens in the pit of our stomach, a wordless agony which seeks expression. The spontaneous outburst of prayer, in churches and synagogues and, yes, in mosques as well, is a gathering of the spirit, a turning to face the depth of nameless emotions in a time of crisis. Our synagogue will be holding such services tonight and tomorrow night. It is not just that there are no atheists in a foxhole. Here, the foxhole is the whole world. And now, we feel a need to simply... huddle together. (And every rabbi in America who had already completed Rosh Hashanah sermons is tossing them out, and starting from scratch.)

A few scattered thoughts, to be developed more fully, and more expertly, I am sure, by others in the days and weeks to come.

The first is that we are all on the front line. It is a feeling Jews have had for centuries, intensified since the Shoah and the birth and struggles of the state of Israel, muted by the false sense of security in this country, shared, this day and for all our tomorrows, by every American.

The second thought is the inevitable reaction, a reminder of the fragility of life. A plane missed, a wrong turn on a street, a chance encounter which threw us from our daily routine -- it can save our life. Or it can cost our life. And we can never, never tell in advance which it will be.

The third thought is a plea, to avoid finger pointing, to keep alive the humanity in ourselves, and in the way we look at others. I have said some things in the last 24-hours in anger which I do not believe have come out of my mouth -- referring to entire groups in terms that are not human, expressing hopes for revenge and destruction on a scale which will satisfy a blood-lust of emotion, but which are... well... wrong. We need to know the difference in ourselves, between the heat of anger, and effective, appropriate and just response. We need to discover the difference between vengeance... and justice.

Finally, there is anger. But it is not just anger at the perpetrators. I must confess to anger at the Bush administration -- for its previous criticisms of Israeli responses to terror. Let's just watch over the course of the next few weeks, to see how completely hypocritical those criticisms turn out to be. Criticizing the Israeli policy of assasinating terrorists? Do you think someone is going to tap Bin Ladin on the shoulder and politely arrest him, to bring him to trial? I think not. I have long said that if a single mortar were, God forbid, fired over the border from Mexico onto a Texas village, the American response would be immediate, swift, disproportionate, and not dependant on world opinion. That Israel's responses would appear positively restrained by comparision.

Now the unthinkable has happened. This is much more than a mortar shell. Almost any American response will be justified. And will have the support of the American people. Including mine. It will be justified.

Let's just see how hypocritical it will be.

Or perhaps... perhaps... perhaps... now "we" (Americans) will understand, what "we" (Jews -- most particularly the Israelis, but I mean the entire Jewish people as well) have been going through.

But this is not the way I would have wanted to earn the sympathy and understanding of America.

We mourn. We cry. We yearn.

We stand together, at this time of crisis.

As one colleague wrote (my friend Sara Perman), connecting the events of yesterday, with the Torah portion of the week: Atem Nitzavim hayom kulchem lifnai Adonai Eloheichem; You are standing this day before the Lord your God... all of you... all of us... those who were there, those who were near, and those who stood bound to and by the images broadcast around the world.

Only the ones touched by fire were burned on the outside. But in another sense, all of us were there. We are all burned on the inside. We have all been attacked. This day, this month, this time, we are all among the injured.

Let us pray. And let us be there for each other.

2001-08-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Boxes and Mirrors:

The Refraction of Difference Through the Lens of Similarity

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Shalom

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Jerry Seinfeld once observed that when you're moving, all of life becomes a search for boxes. See a store: hey, got any boxes? See a friend: hey, how are you for boxes?

A box was found far away the other day. A box was found, and a moving story revealed, and the earth underneath our theological feet quivers, even if it does not shake.

The box was found in Israel, and it was a tomb. On the tomb were the astonishing words: "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."

Now, who is James, and why is this important?

The inscription of a sibling on a tombstone is not unheard of -- if the sibling was sufficiently prominent. James, of course, was recorded in other places as the brother of Jesus. The question is: what does "brother" mean? The issue here relates to a debate between Protestants and Catholics regarding Mary, and her ongoing -- how shall I put this -- "status." Protestants solved the issue by viewing James as simply the younger brother. Catholic tradition had taught that Joseph and Mary continued to have (again, how to phrase this?) a somewhat unusual marital arrangement. And therefore Catholic tradition has read "brother" as "close relative," perhaps "cousin."

Well, this is obviously an internal Christian debate. So they found a coffin of Jesus' kin. What does this have to teach us about ourselves? In other words, as we perennially seem to be asking ourselves: is it good for the Jews?

Let us imagine, for a moment, that you are a high school English teacher at the very beginning of a school year. You want to get to know your students as quickly as you can. The curriculum calls for a book report as an early assignment. You have two options. You can send everyone to the library, and ask them to pick out their own books. Or you could assign everyone the same thing, and then read the reports.

Which one lets you learn about your students more quickly? Some would say it is by letting the students pick their own books, that in freedom their choices will reveal their interests, and their passions. But then what do you do with the different results? You can learn about their choices, but cannot be sure if their comments are reflections of themselves, or something in the book they chose. No, ironically, I think it is through the template of similarity that differences are more rapidly revealed. In reacting to the same thing, different results are real reflections of differences in the students themselves.

So, to, in the study of religion. We often learn more about ourselves through an encounter with similarity, then we do when we start from wildly different situations.

This year, in December, three great traditions celebrate three very different holidays. The end of Ramadan coincides with the beginning of Chanukah. And Christmas comes at the end of month (a pointed reminder to retailers who insist that it begins the day after Halloween). For now, though, it is the three traditions that I want to focus on, not the holidays themselves.

"James, brother of Jesus." This reminds me of something I noticed a long time ago.

Each one of the three great monotheistic traditions of the West began with a founding figure. In Judaism, although the first Jew was Abraham, the founding figure is really Moses. In Christianity a similar role was played by Jesus, and Islam, of course, was founded by Muhammed.

With the "death" (the quotation marks are in deference to the Christian theological tradition at the moment) of the founding figure, all three religions faced the same question: who will lead us now? And all three traditions had the same internal dynamic. Does the mantle stay "in the family," or does it pass to a "spiritual" disciple? In all three religions, we have an echo to this day of that initial question of succession.

In Judaism, the echo is felt in the remnant of the role of the Cohanim, the priests, in traditional circles. Political leadership passed from Moses to his disciple Joshua, it is true. But a large role was left for the priests, descendants of Aaron... brother of Moses.

In Islam, following the death of the Prophet, one group followed the leadership of the consensus choice for the Caliphate, the unrelated (although in Islam every Muslim is considered "related") spiritual heirs of Muhammed. This group is called the Sunnis. And another group followed the leadership of Ali, nephew of Muhammed. This group is called the Shi'ites.

(A similar dynamic played itself out in later Jewish history. A story is told regarding the death-bed remarks of the founder of Chasidism, the great Israrel Baal Shem Tov. He pulled his son, Abraham, known as Abraham the Angel, close to him, and said: "My son, you will be revered throughout your life. But you will not lead." The leadership of the Chasidic movement passed not from father to son, but to a disciple, the Dubner, the Maggid of Mezerich.)

What can we learn, from the confluence of such a tension, from the presence, in each of these traditions, of this "competition" between family and follower? Think, for a moment, of the divisions of our lives. Of the impact we have in our work, and the impact we have at home. Are the legacies distinct? Or are they intertwined. For those of us whose work is home, is there a feeling of integration, of meaning, in the lives we lead, the lessons we teach. For those whose time is split between different places: are the values we live at work, and the lessons we teach at home, compatible?

And one more thing. From the echoes of the past, from the idealized camaraderie of all Muslims, from the use of family titles for Catholic clergy, from the fact that the words recited by the Kohanim (the priests) over the congregation are the same one as those recited by parents for their children at dinner on Friday nights ("Yiverechecha Adonai v'yishmerecha; May God bless you and keep you..."): perhaps the intertwining of our family and our teachers gives us one more lesson as well. That the goal of a spiritual community is to learn of love in the midst of our family. And then, gradually, gingerly, graciously... to extend that love: from kin, to clan, from parents to pedagogs, and beyond... eventually, to all the family of humankind. We begin with blood. But in the end we learn: our fate and our faith are bound up together with that... of every human being.

At this season of the spirit, my best wishes to you... and to us all.

2001-06-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

Lo Nafsik Lirkod

We Will Not Stop Dancing

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

Here we go, jumping in to the fractious fray, where everyone is shouting at the top of their lungs with utter certainty that they are right, and no one is listening to each other. And the media... Well, the media conform sink to the lowest common denominator, reporting every conflict as if it is a scorecard of opposition between two sides, not an anguished act of conscience torn between two compelling sides who are probably both right.

Reporters focus on the contest, and ignore the content.

I am writing about the excruciatingly painful decision of the leadership of the American Reform movement, announced two weeks ago by the President of the UAHC (Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the national Reform movement) Rabbi Eric Yoffie, to cancel its teen tours and trips to Israel for this coming summer. But before I dig myself into any kind of deeper hole than I am already in, let me come clean.

The NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth) Summer Israel experience changed my life. I am a rabbi because of it. Far more importantly, I am a committed Jew and a passionate Zionist because of that trip I took, for eight weeks, between my 11th and 12th grades, oh, 24 years ago. So I am biased. The NFTY trips to Israel are the biggest in terms of attendance... and among the best in terms of quality... of any way for an American teen to experience Israel. They were three decades ago.

They remain so today.

So I am an advocate of these trips. I believe in their importance.

For American youth. And for Israel and Israelis. I believe in their power.

And I believe in their safety. Time and again I have told my congregation here in Buffalo that I believe that travel to Israel is far safer then, well, then driving around Buffalo in the winter. Now? Yes, now. Even now.

(Especially now? Do YOU own Firestone tires??)

We need Israel. Israel needs us. I am a Zionist.

And I am a hypocrite.

Since last October I have itched, I have yearned to get on a plane. To do what? To just go. To leave home, to go home, to show the world what home means.

And I have not done so. First there were interviews. Then there were expenses. Then we were expecting. (Well, we still are. Although by the time you read these words...???) Now we are packing. Every moment offers its own excuse: a new baby, a new city, a new job. Life gets in the way.

I feel the bitter taste of an old joke gone sour in my mouth. How many Zionists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Five, four to go out and find a fifth person to do it for them.

So how can I even open up my mouth, and wade into the fray of the current argument over whether these trips should have been canceled? I am hardly the one. But in the midst of hysteria and hypocrisy, unfortunately, I cannot keep silent.

First of all, I think there is an awful lot of griping and grousing in the world. Rabbi Eric Yoffie made a very difficult decision, and whether we agree with it or not (one day I feel one way, another the other), it's a whole lot easier to react to it than it was to take this action in the first place. Criticism has been ubiquitous and deafening...and really tiresome (with apologies to Firestone once again). This one did not like how this sentence sounded, this one didn't like the way the press release looked, this one agreed with the decision but thought it should have been announced differently, this one didn't like the city the speech was made in. I am exaggerating, but the point is that when you get this kind of reaction, what is really going on is that everyone is in agony, and no one has the right answer. And sometimes everyone acts as if they do.

The mayor of Jerusalem was particularly pugnacious. Ehud Olmert announced that he was cutting off all ties with the Reform movement. Right.

As if he really had any to begin with.

There's two things I want to say about this whole horrible mess. The first is that things are not as simple as they seem. And the second is that sometimes they are as simple as they seem. (Sorry. You expected coherence? On this topic?)

Here's the first point. I know someone whose son was in Israel on an American-run semester-long program recently. They were told that they were to stay put in the location of their program, that there were to be no optional activities, that security concerns trumped the normal secondary benefit of these trips -- exploring a new world, in a safe but partly unstructured fashion. All instructions which were safe, and sound, and reasonable... and ridiculous.

Because here's the thing. These kids are... ON A TRIP. They are not sitting on their hands in their own homes, in their own neighborhoods, in their own familiar world. The analogy with American kids visiting Israel, and the Israeli kids who grow up there DOES NOT HOLD. All the arguments and accusations against American parents who "think there children's lives are more important" than the lives of Israeli children (according to the accusers) miss the point.

Oh, I'm sure it was bad PR to cancel the trips publicly. It came at a bad time. It wasn't handled perfectly (and what ever is?) But at least part of me thinks (I can't believe I am writing this) that Rabbi Yoffie was right.

The thing about kid's trips to Israel is that kids are... well, KIDS. They NEED that aspect of the trip that involves the unfettered exploration. The part that is the first to be lost in the face of this level of security concerns.

This accounts for why the Birthright trips of college students are down less than the high school programs. Birthright is shorter, the participants are older, they ALREADY by-and-large live away from home and for both of those reasons the participants can handle these particular changed circumstances better than tenth-graders away from home for up to two months.

And adults, by this logic, SHOULD be going to Israel now... in droves. I hope the newly announced Reform movement ADULT solidarity mission to Israel at the end of July brings more adults to Israel than the canceled youth missions ever would have. It's the only way to respond to this difficult choice. It's the only answer. Even if I will not be on that trip myself.

The difference between the cancellation of many of the NFTY-kids and the continuation by the Birthright programs is NOT, and should not be reported to be, a difference in a level of Zionist commitment. For God's sake, no offense to Birthright, but it's actually almost the opposite -- Birthright is a free program -- and a wonderful one -- for college students who HAVE NEVER BEEN ON AN ORGANIZED TRIP to Israel before. Those who signed up for these NFTY trips are HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS motivated to go on an expensive trip at an earlier age. So the difference here is not one of Zionist fervor. It is one of social circumstance. And sorry, media-folk, but I haven't seen anyone reporting the story that way. Maybe it's too complex a reality to report. Maybe all this name-calling makes for better headlines. You can't boil a complex subject down to just a few words.

Well. But, then again. Maybe you can.

As much as I understand my movement's decision, and as much as I don't like seeing us take it on the chin for a hard choice, one counter image comes to mind. I have heard that there is a sign hanging up now, for all to see, at the entrance to the Dolphinarium Discotheque in Tel Aviv, sight of the horrendous suicide attack that led Yassir Arafat to eventually attempt to pretend to act like a civilized human being for an hour or two.

The sign has three Hebrew words on it. They are words which hit me at the core of who I am. Or at least who I claim to be. They are perhaps the most inspiring three words I have ever heard.

What are the words.

The sign says, I am told, just this: "Lo Nafsik Lirkod. "We will not stop dancing."

I don't know what to say, exactly, about the details and politics of particular trips. All I know is that these three words give me a lot to think about. As an American. And as a Jew.

Take them with you for a while. Bring them in to your own soul. Chew on them, and ponder them, and figure out for yourself what it means to you.

Lo Nafsik Lirkod.

We Will Not Stop Dancing.

2001-03-10T17:48:00.000-08:00

First written in 2001;
chilling to think that in March of 2001, I wrote something eerily prophetic,
when I said: "This Yom Kippur, think about the Taliban." Little did I know...

To Look Away From Evil:

Afghanistan's War Against Civilization

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

This Yom Kippur, take a moment, and think about the Taliban.

Why Yom Kippur? There is that moment, in the middle of the afternoon service when we (Reform Jews, or those using the Reform High Holy Day Machzor called Gates of Repentance) read the following words: "What pains were taken to save cathedrals, museums, monuments from destruction. Treasures of art must be preserved -- they are the song of the human soul! And in the camps and streets of Europe mother and father and child lay dying, and many looked away. To look away from evil: Is this not the sin of all 'good' people?"

The world is united now. We are united in disgust and revulsion and horror as we watch, helpless, a group of thugs and barbarians destroy priceless ancient statues, huge images of Buddha carved into sandstone
cliffs between the third and fifth centuries CE. Wanton attacks on masterpieces of the spirit, ordered by the most extreme Muslims in the world, out of some warped sense of needing to destroy all traces of idolatry around them.

How extreme are they? They are opposed as too extreme by... Iran! Only three countries in the world recognize the legitimacy of their government -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates -- and all three have condemned this narrow and overly literal interpretation of Islam.

I am glad that the Taliban stand alone in this act of madness. I am glad the whole rest of the world comes together in condemnation. I share the sense of anger and loss, and the understanding that these magnificent
statues represent a soaring height of accomplishment, that they are, well, art, and that art is indeed, as the prayerbook asserts, the song of the human soul.

To attack art is to tread on something sacred and precious, an assault on our basic sense of human decency.

Any yet... two things trouble me. The first is that this interpretation of smashing idols sounds...awfully familiar. To the dismay of museum curators and antiquities dealers around the world, the book of Deuteronomy clearly calls for the same kind of action on encountering statutory worship symbols of other religions. It is a matter of historic debate amongst scholars as to whether such measures were ever actually
carried out (I prefer the argument that they were not, but have no proof); nevertheless the act that so disgusts the world is right there in our own tradition. "On the books," as it were.

And secondly: this assault on human decency and dignity...pales in my mind, in comparision to what else the Taliban are doing... to human beings.

This is the group of fanatical hate-mongers who are making it a crime for the women and girls of Afghanistan ... to learn how to read! The statues have symbolic value and power, to be sure. But in the course of life, what's the crumbling of an ancient statue, in comparison with the closing of a precious mind? Where was the world --where is the world? - in reaction to how the Taliban treat their own people?

It is an age old question: when you see something wrong, what do you do? What can we do? A parent hitting a child in a supermarket. A teenager lighting up a cigarette for the first time. It's their business. It's
their life. We'll get in trouble for saying something. It's not our place.

How would we like someone snooping in our own closet of values? Are not some of the things we ourselves take for granted morally suspect in the eyes of others.

This is not an easy discussion. Are we to be the world's morality police?

But where is the line? It is uncomfortable to tell someone else that what they are doing is wrong. It is even dangerous. Take it a step further: what you are doing is wrong, and we will not let it stand. Should the
United States not have gone to war against Nazi Germany... earlier than it did, and for different reasons? Would we have invaded Cambodia to stop the slaughter... had we not just left Vietnam with our tails tucked behind us (or whatever the proper expression might be for beating a hasty retreat)?

When do we say something? When do we do something? How can we?

But. How can we not? And I don't mean the statues. I mean the people.

It is ethnocentric, it is biased, it is chauvinistic, it is imperialistic to say what I am about to say. But I am going to say it anyway. The Taliban are evil. I don't know what can be done about them. I'm not at all certain. But we should all start talking about it. At the very least, to put what they are doing to their society front and center in the radar screen of our own sensibilities. To not avert our eyes, but tostare the hard questions in the face, and see what answers may come.

For to look away from evil: is that not the sin of all 'good' people?

2000-09-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hin'ni:

Between Arrogance and Awe

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

"Here I am, stuck in the middle with you..."
It's that time of year again. Elul has come, the holidays approach, and I am stuck. Struck dumb by the vastness of the task, the wideness of the world, I once again feel myself wanting for words.

Almost every year, as the summer inexorably fades to fall, I have a recurring dream. It is Rosh Hashanah. I step up to the lectern for the beginning of my sermon. I open the manila file folder in which I have placed my remarks and, to my horror, the folder is empty. I look out at the sea of faces. And I wing it.

I haven't had the dream yet this year. But it is due sometime soon.

The funny thing is: I've never, ever, ever put a sermon in a file folder before reading it.

"Hin'ni, he'ani mimas, nifchad m'pachad yosheiv t'hilot Yisrael." It is the cantor's prayer at the opening of High Holy Day services, or the rabbi's. They are among the most sincere words of prayer I utter all year long. "Behold, me of little merit, trembling and afraid as I stand before You, to plead for your people Israel." And plead with them. And find something to say.

Two things make High Holy Day sermons hard for me. The first is sorting through my head. The second is sorting through my heart.

As to the first, truly, there is so very much to say. Each year, the events of the past, the horrors of hatred or nature, each year its own share of earthquakes or hurricanes, terrorism and hate crimes, each year another occasion to dwell on the nature of suffering whatever its source. Each year there are the gaffes of leaders, the stumbling of the mighty, examples of moral outrage -- or courage -- all around. Meditations on the meaning of life, the contemplation of death, the vastness of the universe and, of course, the importance of Israel Bonds.

From the middle of the summer, every article, every encounter, every touch of nature's beauty and every hint of a possible insight becomes grist for the proverbial sermonic mill. Do or say something interesting anywhere near a rabbi during the summer, and risk being immortalized in front of a captive congregation. The ideas and insights cook in some kind of mental mulligatawny soup until either something wonderful emerges, or it does not.

Which spice to use, which ingredient stands out, can affect the feel of the whole holiday period for countless listeners. (Except for those who sleep during the sermon. That, too, is an ancient Jewish tradition.)

First comes the sifting of ideas. Then must come the sifting of the soul.

For who am I, after all, to stand up there, and try to touch people's lives? What right do I have to try, and what chutzpah to think I can succeed? There are times -- often when I encounter very capable colleagues, at conferences, in teaching sessions where someone shares a brilliant insight or opens up a whole new world for me, or in encounters with people I am supposed to be teaching, who give and teach me so much more than I give to them -- when I am stunned into silence, in awe and appreciation, at the gifts I have been given from others, at the depth and talent and wisdom and powerful presence of others.

I have seen so very, very many colleagues and companions. What hope have I to hope to stand among these giants?

I speak of the dilemma of this season, from a rabbi's point of view. But it is not just for rabbis and cantors. Perhaps I am not alone in standing on the razor's edge, between appreciation and envy, between arrogance and awe.

To accomplish anything of significance in this world, all of us must find the right mix, the proper balance, between a perspective so broad that it stills our hand, and a bloated view of our own importance.

In that narrow and occasional zone of a healthy ego, we discover anew: that what we do matters. That we can reach others. And that, if we let the world touch us, we can, perhaps, touch the world in return.

2000-08-09T18:15:00.000-07:00

Two Jews, Three Opinions
On Joseph Lieberman, Ovadia Yosef, and Us

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Beth Am
Williamsville, New York

It was only yesterday. But I can't remember exactly when it was that I started to cry.

I don't remember if it was when Senator Lieberman spoke about how hard his father worked, to give his children a better life, in a way which could have been describing... my grandfather. Or if it was when he spoke in almost mystical devotion about the openness, the goodness, the hope-as-wide-as-the-horizon expansiveness of the American Dream. Or if was when I looked down for a moment at my children, one asleep on the sofa, the other playing with his Thomas trains and oblivious to the fact that in the flashing electronic images of the television screen he was mercifully and miraculously ignoring, his life, and his brother's, were changed forever. This was just not a barrier I had ever given much thought to. I had never really felt it before. But today I feel light-headed and amazed. I feel the oppressive weight of that barrier's absence, now that it is so suddenly and surprisingly gone.

There are three thoughts that I have, almost gut reactions still, to the stunning news of Joe Lieberman's selection as the vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic party. They have to do with the Antisemitism factor, the Ambassador syndrome, and the American dream. They have to do with fear. And duty. And hope.

First, the fear. It is clear, and it is here, on our minds, and in our hearts. The perennial question, tucked away beneath our pride: "is this really good for the Jews." It seems to be. But what if? What if the reaction is severe? What if the fruitcakes and vipers come out of the closet? What if the peddlers of hate find their voice, find an audience, and find their target?

For they are making their presence felt already. America Online itself has noted and disposed of a sudden surge of garbage: hate messages aimed at the candidate. Conspiracy theorists and name-callers alike are having a field day. AOL, to its credit, is permanently banning purveyors of hate. And on Monday, the (soon to be past?) president of the Dallas chapter of the NAACP -- a distinguished, noble and honorable organization -- spoke of suspicion of "partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we

know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kinds of things." He was roundly condemned, by other local and almost all national NAACP leaders, and seems to have been speaking for himself, not for his community.

It is unclear how to look at the glass. Is it half-empty, for the fact that such things are being said? Is it half-full, for the reaction of support and the fact that this nomination could happen at all? Or is it, as one of my colleagues who is also very active in black-Jewish relations said, the sound of a glass ceiling, breaking?

Or should we forget about the glass, and reach for the knife? For perhaps we have been given an opportunity, in this moment, that will be a long time in coming again. Yes, there is going to be an antisemitic backlash against this nomination. So let it come. Let it come out. Let the fact that a Jew is running for the second highest office in the land drive our enemies crazy enough to show themselves for what they are. Let it draw the venomous snake out of the corner in which it has been hiding, draw it out, so we may slay it! Even a short-term negative experience, the feeling of nervousness some of us express, may be a boon in the long-run. For well we know that the ugliest sore, a festering wound finally heals when exposed to the air, not when it is covered up. This, then, is an opportunity. To face our fear, and overcome it.

It is also a time of duty. Let me turn the table, to those of you who are reading these words. How many of you have, already, been asked about the Lieberman nomination by non-Jewish friends, or family, or neighbors? How many of you feel as if, somehow, we are all expected to have a standard answer? The same reaction?

Well, you know, that's just plain natural. It is, I think, well and good. It is like the time, in the middle of the Six Day war, when Muscovites not known for their great affinity with their Jewish citizens, just average Ivans in the street, approached their Jewish neighbors and said, with their first ever respect in their voices, "hey! You guys did a really good job." It is a reminder, as before in our history, that we are all in this together. Like it or not, we are all ambassadors.

To be an ambassador means that people who are not Jewish will turn to us for "the Jewish point of view." Like the expectation that you are the one who is going to bake the latkes and bring in dreidels and light a menorah for all the kids in kindergarten. And, like our annual patient, this-is-how-it-is-for-us stance which sustains us through many-a-December, as ambassadors, today, too, we are called upon to be teachers.

It is said that Senator Joseph Lieberman is a man of faith, and of family values. Well, that is true. But, you know, family values for a Jew may differ from family values for a Christian. Perhaps we view women

differently. Perhaps we view sexuality in a different way. What are Jewish values? How can he be pro-family values, and pro-choice? (Easy, if you know anything about Judaism. Incomprehensible, if you do not.) And Senator Lieberman is a traditional Jew. What is Orthodox Judaism? What are the differences amongst the various groups of Jews?

Sometimes even his sound-bite answers which are all that will make it on to the evening news are going to require amplification for our neighbors. In addressing the question of what he was willing to do on Shabbat, Senator Lieberman compared himself to doctors who get beeped, use the phone, and drive off from the synagogue to the hospital on Shabbat. Now, that's an explanation that makes perfect sense -- but only if you already know that electricity, telephones and automobiles are forbidden on the Sabbath. Without a background, someone could easily miss the entire point. And my guess is that the news commentators are not going to provide adequate background.

Guess what folks? Better brush up. Because whenever Senator Lieberman answers a question about Judaism or Jewish tradition, it is going to be up to us to fill in the blanks. To answer and amplify, to give details and backgrounds, and, of course, our own explanations of how we do things differently. Joe Lieberman was nominated. And your life will change. As it has been, you and I are the chosen ones, to represent our faith. And to teach those we come in contact with what it means, for you, for me, what it

means to us, to be a Jew.

And finally. As a Jew, and as an American, this is a time of hope, and pride, and joy.

It is an election year. And every election, politicians of all stripes are going to fight with each other to tell us that x, or y, or whatever, "that's what this election is all about." Being from Washington D.C., with

politics in my blood, there is much I find fascinating about campaigns and about governing, but this attempt to define us for us is one of the most interesting -- and truly important -- aspects of the entire political process. Sometimes it is blatant. Sometimes setting the agenda, defining the terms of debate, indeed, defining the time and seizing the future, sometimes this can actually be quite subtle. But in every election, there is

a titanic and often subterranean battle, between "uniters" and "dividers," between those who point to the sky, and those who point at each other.

I believe that it is not just as an election strategy, but it is the sacred responsibility of politicians to lift our sights, to focus our vision, to remind us of the greatness we can achieve, not the bitterness and rancor

and bile which can tear us apart. Sometimes it is the one who lifts our sight to greatness who wins the day. "It is morning in America." Or: we are no longer the Labor party. We are "One Israel."

This is a battle because unity does not always win the day. Dividers thrive because division works. The easiest, quickest -- and least healthy way -- to build yourself up, is to put someone else down. Just look at the flap in Israel the other day, when an aging and I hope-to-God senile, because that would excuse this a little bit, former Sephardic chief rabbi and power behind the throne of the Shas party, Ovadia Yosef, said that the victims of the Nazi Holocaust were the reincarnated souls... of sinful Jews. Probably nothing else he could possibly have said, about anything, ever, could have caused such pain. And probably nothing else could have gotten him so much attention.

What a contrast, in one week, between two Orthodox Jews. Yosef Lieberman, and Ovadia Yosef. Let us not run to think of Orthodox Judaism as owned by Ovadia Yosef. For if ever we are tempted to stereotype our own, remember... Lieberman, too, is an Orthodox Jew. And for me, a reminder, of perhaps the best that Orthodoxy can produce.

Which brings me back to the power of vision. It is expressed, in this country, in the language of the American Dream. It is not that in the game of life, the one who dies with the most toys wins. Not in my game, anyway.

For in the campaign of life, the one who expands our horizons, who lifts our spirits, who makes the soul soar to heights it never knew before, in the campaign of life the one who swells the heart wins. Maybe not an election. Not always. But wins the prize its all about. The prize which calls us to the goodness, and the greatness, that is there inside. Inside us, all along.

In my heart this week there is no venom. There is only ambrosia. The mythical food of the gods. And the song in my heart, of the unity of all, the oneness at the heart of the world. The greatness and goodness of the one God, who can bring us together, and lift us all.

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal God is One.

2000-06-01T18:42:00.000-07:00

A controversial column written in 2000, quite some time before I changed my position (in the fall of 2008) on officiation at interfaith marriages. Interestingly -- to me, at least -- reading the words of this column now reveal how long ago it was that I was giving serious thought to chaning that position. (My current stance on officiation at interfaith weddings can be found at http://www.templeshalom.net/index.php/writings_detail/in_different_words/. [I will try to post these remarks on the blog in the near future. -- MLF]

Apples and Oranges:

Same-Sex Ceremonies and Mixed Marriage

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Buffalo, New York

From the faded memories of freshman philosophy classes, come this ancient example of flawed logic: a) All men (we didn't say "human beings" yet) are mortal. b) Socrates is a man. c) All men are Socrates.

Faulty logic is common in our society. Very few people are innocent of the hidden assumptions that lead to skewed syllogisms. Errors become embedded in public discourse. Just ask the mayor's aide in Washington, DC, who had to apologize in a hail of protest for using the word "niggardly."

How dare he say something so demeaning to African Americans? Never mind that the word is Scandinavian in origin (Norwegian, to be precise), and has no connection whatsoever with the similar sounding racial epithet which, if used today, might properly force someone out of public life.

So, logic and accuracy do not always carry the day in the public square.

Perception shapes reality as much as, well, "reality" does. This is partly because emotions are at least as much a part of our public life as is logic.

(Just ask Mr. Spock, or any other conveniently located Vulcan observing human beings.)

In Jewish life, there is no more emotional issue than that of mixed marriage. A clarification of terms. Sociologists sometimes make a distinction between "mixed" marriage, in which two partners from different backgrounds are married to one another, even if one of the partners has converted to the religion of the other, and "interfaith" marriage, in which the partners continue to identify, even nominally, with different faith traditions. Rabbis tend to use these terms interchangeably, to refer only to the latter situation; Jewish tradition demands that once someone has chosen Judaism, they are, well, Jewish, and if their are two Jews in a marriage it is no longer considered a mixed marriage, even if the couple still faces issues dealing with their families of origin.

Last month I shared with you my reaction, and my opinion, to the recent favorable vote of the Reform rabbinate in Greensboro, North Carolina regarding officiation at same-gender ceremonies, whatever those ceremonies are called ("commitment" ceremonies, affirmation ceremonies, kiddushin -- the Jewish term for marriage, or "marriage" as it is defined by the state).

Since that time, I have received numerous e-mails, and even long distance phone calls (to the woman who wanted me to call her back but never heard from me: the phone number we wrote down was a number no longer in service; this column is in part a response to your call, among others). While many reactions were supportive of what I had to say, and one, from an Orthodox woman, while disagreeing with my conclusion, was one of the most precious responses I have ever received, nevertheless a constant theme ran through many of the comments. Expressed in anger, in outrage, or in gentle puzzlement, it boils down to a simple question. The question is this: "If you will officiate at a ceremony for two Jews of the same gender, why won't you do my [fill in the blank: daughter, son, cousin, etc]'s wedding to someone who is not Jewish?

After literally years of thinking about this question, after months of frustration and exasperation at something that seems clear as day to me, I finally admitted to myself that it is a good question. It is one that deserves an answer, even if people do not like what I have to say. What follows, in part, is my attempt to answer this question, at several levels, and the challenges that such an answer has posed to my own previous positions.

Here is the first part of my initial response. I still believe this part of my response is valid, even though I see more layers to the question than I did at first. Even though I now recognize this as a good question, it is nevertheless a bad analogy. It is based on the understandable emotion of the issue, but it is flawed logic. What someone who argues this way is saying is that either you should follow tradition in all circumstances, or you should bend tradition in all circumstances. There is no room for a case by case decision, for weighing the demands of the day, balancing the needs of the people, the presence of alternatives and the availability of options with the integrity of the tradition as understood by each rabbi.

So let's be clear. These are apples and oranges. This, despite the fact that a gay friend of mine once said that he thought any marriage between a man and a woman was a mixed marriage. My wife and I had a good laugh over that. And I guess that guy with the planet-gender book thing going on is making a fortune off the very same premise. In the case of a man and a woman who want an exclusively Jewish ceremony and a Jewish home and a Jewish family there is a way they can accomplish this, within the tradition. (I'm not even going to address the growing demand for these "equal time" ceremonies, for couples who want to actively practice two authentic but occasionally contradictory faith traditions in their own lives, and therefore expect a rabbi and a priest to show up for them and not bother them with any hard questions about their spiritual lives.) If Judaism is actually important to both partners, the one who is not Jewish has a choice. He or she can become Jewish. And have a Jewish wedding of almost any kind the couple wants.

The issue is one of choice. A gay couple who want a Jewish sanctification for their relationship do not have the option of changing their sexual orientation and finding other people in order to have a traditional ceremony. Well, I suppose they do, but this option, exercised for centuries, leads to a kind of agony and misery no one would want to impose on anyone. Unless you believe that sexual identity is as much a matter of volition and choice as is spiritual identity, the comparison of interfaith couples with same-gender couples is apples and oranges. Even if there are common experiences both couples would share as "nontraditional" Jewish families.

A wedding ceremony is a coming together in unity of two people. I believe that the officiant at a wedding ceremony should stand on common ground with both participants. The common ground I am trained to stand on with a couple is that of Judaism. I can do that -- with some creativity -- with two Jews of the same gender, as well as, of course, for a Jewish man and a Jewish woman. The common ground shared by a couple of different faith traditions is that of the civil authority of the community in which they are being married. I will meet with an interfaith couple, and help them write their own ceremony, in which they, as individuals, introduce elements of their own traditions into the ceremony. But I believe that the most appropriate officiant at an interfaith wedding is a justice of the peace.

The uniter should be united with the unitees.

And yet. Unsure enough of my position, and, like most rabbis, really wanting to help people, I will refer a couple to other rabbis whose positions are different from mine. Not all rabbis who do not perform interfaith weddings will do this. But now, there is something that pulls at me anew, and I am struggling with my position once again.

I really believe that I am right in the distinction I have made between same gender couples and interfaith families. But in wanting to welcome Jewish families in all the configurations in which they come (and I absolutely believe that I have been able to create a welcoming atmosphere for interfaith couples in my congregations, just as many rabbis who would not officiate at a same sex ceremony can welcome gay couples in other ways), there is something about the argument being made by so many people linking these two issues. "Can 20,000 Frenchmen be wrong?" (I don't know the origin of the quote, nor why it leaves out French women.) Sometimes perception is reality. And maybe, just maybe, my whole position is worth rethinking.

There was a time, about a year and a half ago, where I almost changed my position. It was a day on which we had two B'nai Mitzvah. The morning service was led by the son of two Jewish parents; the afternoon service (yes, we do Havdalah B'nai Mitzvah; it is problematic as well as powerful, and the subject for another discussion) was led by the daughter of an interfaith family. At the morning service, I knew -- I just knew -- that after the service I would never see that child again. And during the afternoon Bat Mitzvah, the girl said, in her remarks, how important it was that her family came together every single Friday night, for Shabbat, for candles and wine and challah and family time. This, with her Presbyterian father sitting right behind her. I nearly changed my position on the spot. I didn't.

But I came close.

Here is why I didn't. I believe in approaching matters in principle, not governing by anecdote. For almost every story of rejection and dejection is another one of people being turned on to Judaism by the integrity of the rabbis they come into contact with. You can't make decisions by polls or anecdote alone, since how you phrase the question in a poll matters, and for every human experience of one kind you can find a story that will support another position. We just do not live in a one-policy-fits-all kind of world.

If I did, if I were to change my position on officiation at interfaith wedding ceremonies, it would be with a number of conditions. They are clear in my mind. That it be an exclusively Jewish ceremony. That the couple study Judaism -- both of them -- together, in an Introduction to Judaism class. That their home will be a Jewish home, and that any children they might be blessed with be raised as Jews. And. That they or members of their families will have been members of a synagogue (if they live in the area, then, of my synagogue) for a certain period of time. Even if I change my position, I will not be a rabbi-for-hire, nor travel far, nor use my position on this subject to pull members from other synagogues where the rabbis take a principled but different position than mine. This despite the fact that I know I could probably put my children through college if I officiated at interfaith ceremonies with no conditions. The demand for a do-absolutely-anything-I-want where I want it when I want it and with whoever else I want you to do it with is that great. But, for all of us, we must balance the accommodation we want to make with the integrity of the tradition we represent.

All that is if I change my position. I have not done so yet. For I have several fears. Among them is the reality of being called upon to judge the future Jewishness of every single couple I would come into contact with. What if someone comes in and meets four and a half of five conditions? What if only four, but is the daughter of the president of the congregation? The politics and pressure surrounding this issue are real, and intense. Maybe I should be prepared to do everything I do on a case by case basis. But I am not. Not now. Not yet.

What I do know is that we all work hard, we all struggle to do what we think is the right thing in this world, and that if it were an easy call it would not be a struggle. I know I will offend some of you by sharing these thoughts. But that was not my intent, and I hope you understand that.

I also know that when two people come together in love, Jewish or gentile, gay or straight, emotion and reason are so mixed up and upside down that you'll never see where one start and the other stops. And that in this crazy world we live in, when you find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, that is at least at some level a wonderful thing.

Whoever officiates. And whatever you call the ceremony.

2000-04-12T08:13:00.000-07:00

Do The Right Thing:

Same-Sex Ceremonies and Reform Judaism

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Buffalo, New York

Sometime I think you can tell if you have been doing a good job or not... by the quality of hate mail you get. I mean, let's face it. A signed, typed, one- to two-page, well reasoned argument from someone who knows how to use a spel chekker is probably worth thinking about a couple of times. A handwritten, multipage, unmarked, unsigned diatribe with penmanship that deteriorates as the writer reaches the crescendo of excitement, especially one that uses arcane mathematical formulas adding up the numbers of chapters and verses in Biblical books to come to some inescapably certifiable conclusions, or which mentions the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, the Kennedy assassination, or which refers in any way whatsoever to my eternal soul, hey, get a letter like that and there's a pretty good chance you're doing something right in your life.

The latest letter of the latter sort I received came a few weeks ago. I had just been quoted in the Buffalo News saying something favorable about same-sex commitment ceremonies. When the return address was replaced by a quote I knew I was in trouble. When the writer informed me about Biblical verses I might have overlooked, I began to grin. When told that Moses would be very angry with me, I was amused. And when told that "the great I AM used me to deliver this message to you," well, I admit it. By that time I had a full blown smile on my face.

You know, this is not too dissimilar from some e-mail I received the last time I made any kind of reference to homosexuality in a column I wrote here. It began in a kindly and informative tone. The writer gently wanted me to know that I was supporting sin. It took about three paragraphs to deteriorate to total rage.

To all of you who are reading these words, who don't agree with my liberal views on this issue: Hello! I already know the verses involved, thank you very much. And while I am tempted to mollify dissenters with a calmly stated, soothingly thoughtful "well, yes, this is a very complicated issue, you know," instead I have a growing sense in the pit of my stomach and the depth of my heart, that acceptance of gays and lesbians and the sanctification of their committed relationships is just and simply an issue whose time has come.

The arguments are played out in so many places I don't need to repeat them here. (I have written on the subject before as well. See my "In God's Image: Judaism and Homosexuality," available through the AOL Jewish Community OnLine.) There are just a few thoughts and impressions I would like to share, from the recent convention of Reform rabbis in Greensboro, North Carolina, at which we voted quite overwhelmingly that "the relationship of a Jewish, same gender couple is worthy of affirmation through appropriate Jewish ritual."

The first one relates to what I wrote about the quality of hate mail. It has to do with the company we keep. It is not a rational response. It is not a compelling argument. It does not clinch the case. But when the people who are arguing against you are the likes of those hate-filled protesters who stood outside the hotel with placards with a picture of the murdered gay man Matthew Shepard reading "He got what he deserved," when that is the face of the opposition, well, maybe we really are doing the right thing. Extremists on any side should not replace reasoned discourse altogether. But sometimes when you see who your enemies really are, your feelings for your allies grow deeper. For me, what started out as an issue on the cutting edge of religious ritual quickly grew to a basic demand of social justice and human decency.

The second impression to share is one of history. The Central Conference of American Rabbis -- the rabbinic association of Reform rabbis on this continent -- has an astonishing track record of vision and prescience. Time and again we have been the voice of the weak, the tormented and oppressed. We were one of the first religious organizations on record in favor of Child Labor Laws. We spoke of reproductive rights long ago -- which at the time meant the legalization of contraception for married couples!! We defended the rights of workers to organize early on, and we have spoken out for civil rights, for women's rights and, now, for the civil and religious rights of gays and lesbians. I am at once both humbled and proud to be part of an organization that has been so right so early so often as to deserve the appellation "prophetic."

In Greensboro, in the city where the civil rights movement reached a new plateau of involvement at the lunch counter of a department store, we were all a part of history in the making again. The final impression I want to share is about the resolution itself. It supports rabbis who choose to officiate at rituals of union for same-gender couples -- and, in a last minute compromise, also supports those rabbis who cannot in good conscience do so. There are those who say that the entire resolution was an unnecessary charade. That there was, before it was passed, nothing to stop rabbis from blessing same-sex ceremonies, nor anything to force a rabbi to do so either.

With this resolution, it is true, that nothing has changed. But everything has changed as well. There are times when a statement of values, of commitment, of principle is just the right thing to do. There was a service at the conference at which a special blessing was recited by our colleagues who are gay or lesbian. They rose to recite the words of the Kaddish deRabanan, the Rabbi's Kaddish. It was one of the most moving moments I have ever seen. What power there was in seeing colleagues -- friends -- able to literally stand up for who they were, as who they are, with the support of a caring community, sometimes for the first time.

I have never before felt the literal power of the words "taking a stand." If ever I had felt, as a heterosexual rabbi, that this was not my issue, that feeling is long gone. It is time to say: the monogamous and committed relationships of two people of the same gender is simply not a threat to my marriage. Or to my children. It is time to say: this is about right as much as rites. It is time to take a stand.

I am glad we did. And I am glad I was there.

2000-03-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

The Sin Also Rises:

Purging the Hametz of the Heart

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

Pesach is my favorite holiday in the Jewish year. Despite all the work, and all the preparation. Because every year, I try to move from sweat to sublime, from physical to spiritual preparation, from the cleansing of the kitchen to the transformation of our lives.

Pesach is really about... the hardness of our hearts, and our openness to others. I begin with the mundane. This has been a frustrating week for my family. Our cleaning service quit on us. With two tiny ones at home, we count on that help though it costs us dearly. It was the worst time in our lives to lose this help. It was the worst time as people newly moved to an area, without a deep network of conenctions and contacts. And, above all, without any doubt, it was the worst time of year that this could have happened. Cleaning has been much on our minds of late. Cleaning and cooking. Scrubbing ovens and counters, changing dishes and utensils, vacuuming the car, clearing the pantry, giving good food away to those in need, and looking for all the places Benjamin has decided to stock up on crackers.

For Jews around the world, a week of hard work lies ahead of us. And, since this cleaning is a religious duty, it falls equally on all members of a household. Whatever our normal division of labor might be. I received revised words to a children's song over the Internet this week, set to the tune of "My Favorite Things," and adjusted to the coming holiday: "Cleaning and cooking and so many dishes; out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes. Fish that's gefillted, horseradish that stings -- these are a few of our Passover things."

As we prepare for Pesach, we are reminded that there are three primary commandments associated with this holiday. Two are positive commandments, things that we are to do. The third is a negative commandment, something we are not to do. The two positive commandments are to tell the story, and to eat matzah. The negative commandment is... to eat no hametz. And it is, of course, the negative commandment that causes so much tzimmes... I mean tzures. That causes so much trouble. We read in the Torah: "From the fourteenth day of the month, at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day, at evening. No hametz (leaven) shall be found in your houses for seven days." (Exodus 12:18-19) Purge the hametz! Sweep it away, or stow it, store it, and sell it! It is not to be in our possession. We are to derive no benefit from it. So much fuss over getting rid of the hametz. But the question can be asked, this year and every year: just what is this hametz we are supposed to get rid of? Hametz is any product of five types of grain -- wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt -- that has been in contact with water for eighteen minutes (thus "rising") without being handled before baking. A product made from any of these grains is permitted on Passover only if it has been subjected to constant supervision from harvest through baking. That is why you can have a box of matzah that is labeled "Not for Passover Use;" this means that the contents of that box were not subject to such strict supervision.

There are additional restrictions. Many of you know that Sephardic Jews eat corn, beans and rice on Pesach, while Ashkenazic Jews do not. But there are other regional variances as well: in Germany, for instance, fowl was not eaten, because the stomach might still contain grain. The removal of hametz is accomplished through a general cleaning, of all rooms of the house, not just the kitchen. It may take time to accomplish. But with the house final almost prepared, the final step is symbolic: the night before Passover, parents sometimes hide ten pieces of bread in the house, and conduct a candle-lit hunt for the hametz with children (or as adults themselves). The final bread, when found, is scooped up with a feather into a wooden spoon, and then ritually burned. A formula declaring all hametz that the family did not find to be null and void is then recited. Again, why the effort? Why the energy? Some people resist ritual, or scoff at ancient rules.

But the ritual is there for a reason. There is a message behind this mad rush of cleaning. or something found in us. And as I scrub away at my stove, trying to reach cracks and corners I don't bother with the whole rest of the year, I remember the words of a poem by Rabbi Lynne Gottleib which I read every time at this year, words which start with the crumbs on the counter, but which end... with the hametz of the heart.

Removing the Hametz
by Rabbi Lynn Gottleib

Removing the Hametz

in the month of Nisan

with the death of winter

and the coming of spring

our ancient mothers

cleaned out their houses.

They gathered brooms, mops, brushes, rags, stones and lime;

they washed down walls,

swept floors/ beat rugs

scoured pots

changed over all the dishes in the house.

They opened windows to the sun

hung lines for the airing out of blankets and covers

using fire

air

and water

in the cleaning.

In the month of nisan

before the parting seas

called them out of the old life

our ancient mothers

went down to the river

they went down to the river

to prepare their garments for the spring.

Hands pounded rock

voices drummed out song

there is new life inside us

Shekhinah

prepares for Her birth.

So we labor all women

cleaning and washing

now with our brothers

now with our sons

cleaning the inner house

through the moon of nisan.

On the ever of the full moon

we search our houses

by the light of a candle

for the last trace of winter

for the last crumbs grown stale inside us

for the last darkness

still in our hearts.

Washing our hands

we say a blessing

over water...

We light a candle

and search in the listening silence

search the high places

and the low places

inside you

search the attic

and the basement

the crevices and crannies

the corners of unused rooms.

Look in your pockets

and the pockets of

those around you

for traces of Mitzrayim.

Some use a feather

some use a knife

to enter the hard places.

Some destroy Hametz with fire

others throw it to the wind

others toss it to the sea.

Look deep for the Hametz

which still gives you pleasure

and cast it to the burning.

When the looking is done

we say:

All that rises up bitter

All that rises us prideful

All that rises up in old ways

no longer fruitful

All Hametz still

in my possession

but unknown to me

which I have not seen

nor disposed of

may it find common grave

with the dust of the earth.

amen amen selah...

The crumbs we sweep away are but an outer symbol, for the crummy stuff inside. Our old, crusty habits. That which rises up inside us which we would rather put aside. The crumbs of the spirit, the staleness of the soul. It is the inner house we cleanse as much as the outer one. Thus does the holiday during which we focus on food more than any other blend in with the holiday during which we eat no food at all. Passover and Yom Kippur, the one focusing on the physical, the other withdrawing from it, nevertheless work together to elevate the soul and improve our lives. But the spiritual message of Pesach is not just about what goes on inside us. It is also... about how we look at the world around us.

We learn lessons not just from the negative commandment of not eating chametz, but also from the positive one, that we tell the tale, again and again, of our going forth from Egypt. And just as hametz proved to be more than bread, Egypt, in the way we retell the story, is more than merely a place. It becomes no longer an ancient country, but a current reality, an ongoing danger, a state of mind. Towards the very end of the book of Genesis, the very last weekly portion in that book displays an unusual, actually, a unique feature. Alone of all the weekly portions in the Torah, there is no space between the end of the previous portion and the beginning of that one. The scribal tradition of copying the text of the Torah, which mandates either half a line of empty space or a full paragraph break before the beginning of all other portions, tells us that on that particular week, the portion starts in the middle of a line. As if... as if something happened in that portion that was so terrible that the writer just wanted to rush on through it. To get it over with.

In Hebrew, the last portion of the book of Genesis is called a "closed" portion, because there is no open space at its beginning. And from the way the words are arranged on the page, a great spiritual lesson can be derived. Why is this is a "closed" portion? Maybe someone is trying to tell us here, that something else begins to "close" during the events relayed in that week's reading. What happened in the last portion of Genesis. Why, Jacob died. That's bad. That's sad. That's true. But plenty of other people lived... rather long lives, I might add... and died in the book of Genesis. What was so bad about Jacob's death? One tradition derives an answer from the "closed" portion. A midrash tells us that the portion is "closed" to teach us that after the death of Jacob, "the eyes and the hearts of the Israelites were closed up because of the difficulty of enslavement."

But there is a problem with this. A historical problem. A contradiction. Because slavery did not begin with the death of Jacob. Only much later.

In fact, there is a verse towards the beginning of the book of Exodus which tells us that Joseph and all his brothers had died. What is the purpose of this verse? To teach us that so long as any of those who had gone down to Egypt from Canaan were still alive, the Egyptians did not enslave the Israelites. So the slavery did not begin until many, many years after the death of Jacob.

There is a wonderful Hasidic commentary which resolves the contradiction in the following way. It is true, this rabbi said, "that the physical slavery did not begin until long after the death of Jacob. But. With Jacob's passing, a different kind of slavery began. The first step. The spiritual servitude. Because Egyptian culture began creeping in and influencing the Israelites, without their seeing or feeling a thing. The internal truth was hidden. Thus, 'the eyes and the hearts of the Israelites were closed up,' for the eyes did not see and the heart did not feel anything except the superficial -- and this is the essence of enslavement."

What an amazing insight. To me.. this is profound Torah wisdom. That the first experience of enslavement is a psychological one. When we can't see what is really going on around us. When we are slaves to the superficial. When we judge a book by its cover. A person by appearance. The color of the skin. Or weight. Or gender. By affiliations of birth. Or orientations of nature. That the story of Pesach is not just about removing ourselves from Egypt. But removing Egypt from us. In the way we look at others. In the way we view the world. "Bechol dor vador, chayav adam lirot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim; in every generation, each one of us must view ourselves as though we ourselves has gone forth from Egypt."

The tale is told not just by us. The story is about us. The story is us. About the pride we are to purge, and the vision we are to focus, to see the world in the depth it deserves. And on Passover, bread is about more than bread, and Egypt is more than a place in our past. They are spiritual symbols, for the puffiness inside, and the pettiness outside. This Pesach, may each one of us rise to the occasion, to sweep away our sins, to cleanse our spirit, to move beyond the labels and petty problems that keep us estranged from one another. This year may we grow in spirit. And then we will know the sweetest taste of Pesach. The one that is neither food nor drink, but a promise we hold out, on the wings of a prayer. "L'shanah haba'ah b'yerushalayim. This year we are slaves. Next year may all be free. This year we are caught up in the problems of our lives. Next year.. in Jerusalem."

2000-02-03T08:16:00.000-08:00

In and Out: Immigration and Identity

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

A young boy leaves his home on a daring journey. He loses his family along the way, and, dripping and shaken, emerges triumphant on the shore of freedom's sea. It is the quintessential American story: a dangerous passage, and rebirth in a new land. It is the American dream.

Only, the epochal, soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture story of the six-year old Cuban boy Elian Gonzales is complicated by a few uncomfortable facts. Such as: he didn't lose his whole family on the way. A father and two grandmothers remain behind, and want him back. And: he is too young to have a total say, in what will become of him.

The United States Congress routinely condemns kidnappings and international terrorism. But in holding a boy in this country, with a father and two grandmothers in Cuba, with the Immigration and Naturalization Service having ruled that the father speaks for the child, how is what certain Republicans in Congress are doing different from what they condemn in other countries? And when is anyone going to have a passion for Elian himself, a passion stronger to their attraction to the votes of the exiles in Miami?

My gut reaction is that, as bad as it may be, Cuba is not Nazi Germany, and Elian's life there will be uncomfortable (although his family is among the limited number of elite in that country) but not ended. How would I have felt about a six-year old Soviet Jew who escaped to freedom two decades ago, but with one remaining living parent still behind the Iron Curtain? I don't know. Six years old? Perhaps I would feel the same way, that the parental tie is more important than the range of future career opportunities. But I am not fully certain.

And I do not know the full details of what Elian would face on a return to Cuba. So I should be a bit more humble, perhaps. It's just that it seems so clear to me that people's reactions are not about the boy at all. Rather, they are a reflection of something else. Not just a political agenda. At its core, our reactions to this case say something about ourselves.

Immigration issues are, and always have been, more about who "we" see as "us," as it is about "them." We welcome Cubans with open arms. In most cases, and certainly with adults, this is entirely appropriate. But look at how we welcome Haitians.

Is it just that our enmity for Castro outweighs our sympathy for anyone who would make it to this country to escape poverty, and in search of a better life? Or is something else going on here? Is it, perhaps, that the Cubans look more like what most of us think an American should look like than does a

Haitian? Is this as much a subjective sense of "us" and "them" and who "we" are, than an objective assessment of need? I am not talking about race alone here. The sense of "us" and "them" underlies so many questions of immigration and assimilation as to serve as a mirror on own identity. Asian American scientists report a sharply increased experience of suspicion and discrimination since one of "them" was accused of spying for a country of origin. This, without a shred of evidence that these dedicated men and women are anything other than fully loyal American citizens.

There have long been those who fan the flames of division and discord. Father Coughlan, in the 1930's, had a radio program that was anti-semitic and anti-immigrant, which played directly on the fears that "they" will infiltrate "our" country. The Sacho and Vanzetti trial of a decade earlier lay the groundwork for an anti-immigration sentiment that swung shut the doors of welcome on which our country was built.

For whom should we not suspect? Who is the real American? The natives of this land are the original "outsiders" in the warped way we look at our country, but who should escape suspicion? British Americans? But we fought two wars against England; they burned our capital to the ground! Our original definition of ourselves, in fact, was that we were not "them."

Americans whose country of origin is Germany? They make up a substantial portion of the population of this country. But need I say anything more?

Americans from France? At least France was our ally in our first war. But that country just won't seem to toe-the-line we want ever since.

Even within our own Jewish community, the definition of "us" and "them" has defined much of our experience. The first American Jews were refugees from Recife, Brazil; Sephardic Jews still seeking a home after the exile from Spain. They established themselves here, and these "grandees" looked down with disdain on the pushy peddlers who arrived next --those pesky German Jews. But the "Our Crowd" soon rose from pushcarts to prominence. One would think they would have remembered the disdain they suffered in the sight of the Sephardic establishment. But, no, they were, if anything, worse in their contempt for the next wave of Jews to come here, the Eastern European Jewish immigrants who came in massive numbers from the 1880's to 1930's, "The Rest of Us." (The three terms used here, "The Grandees," "Our Crowd" and "The Rest of Us" are references to books written about the Sephardic Jews of America, the early German Jewish immigrants, and the Eastern European immigrants, respectively, by Stephen Birmangham.) The German Jews were so determined to rapidly Americanize, but at the same time remain apart from these Ostjuden (Eastern Jews), that they set up entire movements and institutions (the Conservative movement and the Jewish Theological Seminary -- established by German Reform Jews for Eastern European semi-Orthodox Jews, as were the Education Alliance, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and a host of other organizations) just to simultaneously assist the newcomers and keep them at arms' length. It was a remarkable display of unity and disdain, of a sense of commonality and separateness rolled into one.

Too often we depend for our own identity not on a sense of who we are, but who we are not. Immigration is not just a question of values, but of identity. Which of them we let in triggers for all of us the touchstone question of not just what we stand for, but: who are "we?" What do "we" look like? It is not an accident that those who rifle through our bags on our return from abroad are called "Customs" agents. For the shores of our sea, the ports of our skies, the terminal points of transport and association are, indeed, the borders of surface lives. They are the meeting point of self and other.

But it is only when the borders bend, when the barriers between us and other fade enough for us to see ourselves in every other, that we can reach beyond the surface. That we can encounter the identity of the soul.

Jacob, too, left parents behind. His journey was not across an ocean. It was over a mountain. He slept on a rock. Tossed not by waves, he tossed in his sleep. And his dream saw beneath the surface of things. For when he woke up to himself, when he opened up his eyes he said: Achain! Yeish Adonai BaMakom HaZeh, v' Anochi Lo Yadati! Behold! God is in this place -- and I, I did not know it!"

Why the repetition? As others have noted, and as I have written before: some would say the word "I" is repeated so that we may pay special attention to what this verse really means. That what is says, in essence, is this: "Behold, God is in this place, when my 'I', my 'self,' my 'ego' I did not know."

For it is only when we can look at an"other" and see not the differences between us but the common heritage of humanity, that we truly reach beyond the limits of the self. It is only when "they" become "us" that "we" can be.

It is only when we are able to transcend differential and division and distinction... that we can meet God.

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad! Hear O Israel! The very prayer that sets us apart as Jews is a key to reaching beyond being apart.

It is a key to the unity of the world. The Eternal God is found in the Oneness of the world. In a place beyond borders and barriers. In a place of wholeness, and oneness and peace.

Who are you? And who is we? And what are we going to do about a young boy in Miami, whose story is not yet told.

His journey is not yet complete.

Neither is ours.

1999-12-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

A Covenant Cocktail:

The Messianic Idea in Judaism

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

Well, for our neighbors, Christmas is coming. And "the Millennium" (which I continue to assert is being celebrated a full year early; see the previously written "Nothing Matters"). An important date in the history of Christianity and the world. So I suppose that what I have to say here may seem politically incorrect. Or, at least, strike some as vying to be a bit of a party pooper. A whole lot of folks around the world are caught up in this idea of the Messiah. But -- with apologies -- I believe that one of the most important ideas in the history of the world may have been the result of an accident.

Let us go back to the beginning, or, at least, to the tale we tell of where it all got started. From the outset of the Bible, we encounter the concept of "covenant," called, in Hebrew, brit. (Yes, the word "brit", or "br is", means "covenant," not "circumcision," since "bris" is only the shortened -- you should pardon the pun -- form of the full phrase "brit milah, covenant of circumcision.") There are clearly two kinds of covenants in the Bible: conditional ones, in which something is promised from God only on condition that certain terms are fulfilled or obligations are met, and unconditional ones, in which a promise from God is given which, although perhaps sealed by a sign of some sort, is not dependent on particular behavior or reciprocity.

The very first covenant in the Bible was a conditional one. God told Adam and Eve that they could live in the Garden of Eden if they did not eat the fruit of a certain tree. The rest is history. (Or mythology, depending on your perspective.)

If Brit Adam was a conditional covenant, than Brit Noach, the second major covenant in the Bible, was unconditional. God told Noah that God would not destroy the world with water again. Period. End of story. Human behavior had hardly changed: the very first thing Noah goes out and does is invent viticulture, get smashed off his... rocker... and have some sort of ugly incident with his son the details of which do not belong in a family column (much less a public school classroom -- take THAT all you folks who think the Bible should be read in public schools!) The rainbow is a sign of the covenant, but the promise is unconditional.

The covenant of Adam and the covenant of Noah -- neither one concerns me at the moment. For it is the subsequent chapters of Biblical history, the covenants to come -- three of them in particular -- which I believe give accidental birth to a concept that shook the world.

We move from universal (pre)history, to the history of our people.

We turn to the first monotheist, the first Jew, the first successful long-term relationship God manages to have with a human being in the book of Genesis.

We turn to Abraham.

Step One. Brit Avraham. The covenant of Abraham. The sign is circumcision, that much we know. But what is the promise? What are the terms?

God promises Abraham that God will give him the land of Canaan, to him and his descendants. Forever. Period. Unconditionally. Brit Avraham thus contains within it an eternal claim to the land.

Step Two. The rest of the Torah. Brit Moshe, the covenant of Moses.

The ideology here is articulated with the most eloquence and rhetorical flourish in the book of Deuteronomy, but it is found throughout the final four books of the Torah. God places before us a choice, and lays it on the line: it is up to us, life or death, the blessing or the curse. If we follow the ways of the Eternal our God, we will live in the land in security. And if we do not, than plagues and pestilence and pesky dental problems will follow, we will suffer low sperm counts and long lines at the grocery store, we will be exiled from the land, and wander the face of the earth. The choice is ours, but the words are clear: the covenant of Moses, whether we live on the land and feel the bounty of God's blessing, is conditional.

It depends on our behavior.

Step Three. We jump ahead, to the story of David. A shephard-musician is elevated to the kingship of Israel. And God makes another promise. Your descendants will be the rulers of the Jewish people for all time. No qualms. And no quality control. Period. Brit David. The covenant of David. An unconditional promise.

Three covenants. Three different situations. But mix them together, and out of the froth of time comes the most potent message of hope in all of human history. Let's look at the implications.

The Jewish people have an eternal claim to the land of Canaan/Israel (Brit Avraham.) But whether we actualize that claim, whether we enjoy it, whether we actually get to live on the land -- that depends on us (Brit Moshe). And: there is a family who is destined to be the leaders of our people forever (Brit David).

It doesn't take much stirring to see what happens. There will come a time when we no longer merit living on the land. But we still have a claim to it. So someday, somewhere, somehow, when we are ready once again, the proper ruler of our people will reemerge. To lead us back to life on the land.

That's it, folks. That is the idea of the Messiah. Fully formed...from working out the details of three previous promises. And that is the Messiah's original job description in Judaism. To go home again. That's the only entry on the resume. None of this making the snow melt in a Buffalo blizzard, or eliminating the need for protective fences in zoos. None of this end of history stuff, or bones rising from the earth -- all of that came later, accretions and additions, some in Judaism and considerably more in Christianity, to an idea that emerged from the promises of yesterday.

The most important idea in history, an accident of implication.

Unless, of course, there are no accidents.

Whatever theological bets you have riding on the next few weeks -- Millennium fever, Messianic expectation, or simply another Shabbat service in a synagogue -- whatever you believe and wherever you will be: a happy new year. To one and all.

1999-08-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Blinded By The Light:

Reflections on a week to remember

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, NY

Across Europe, over Asia, floating on boats or on faraway farms and fields, this past week millions of souls saw an awesome and frightening sight. It was dark in the middle of the day, a chill fell in the heart of the heat. As a shadow swept over the source of light, crossed its path and cut it out, a disk of darkness brought out the corona-reality that was there all along, but hidden from view.

It was the last total eclipse of the century. Even, in the common calendar, of the millennium. Across Europe, over Asia, it was a strange sight indeed.

Open your eyes and you will no longer see! Stare at the sky, look into the light and go blind.
The flames of the furnace, that were there all along. Look not across an ocean. For here, across America, the blinding fire flares.

And behold! Those who look into the heavens for easy answers go blind, and see in all the world but black and white. Struck blind they strike out blindly all around.
Yitgadal

Chicago

V'yitkadash

Sacramento

Sh'ma Rabah

Los Angeles
Our eyes and hearts go out to a California community now -- and to the family of a postal worker in the wrong place at the wrong time -- but the image burns and lingers, policeman leading children across an empty highway, holding hands in a chain of life, parents running to and fro. Such small children. Far away perhaps, but we watch at the speed of the heart, and distance disappears.

The monster emerges, and smiles. How he loves his moment in the sun.

For this he lived, for this he killed, for this he is willing to die.

Surely he has seen the light. So sure he is that he is right. That all the world makes sense, if only you know who the enemy is. If only you know how to hate.
Add to the names and headlines a small footnote. This past week, as the sun set in daytime, and as a man on the West Coast was loading up his van with weapons, someone drove into the parking lot of my own synagogue with a can of spray paint, and added their own version of venom. A swastika appeared, along with the informative message that "Jews are bad news."

The words are gone now, and the message quickly removed. Only a tiny trace is left behind. You can see it, if you squint, only in a certain light, with strong sunglasses at the right angle. The hatred is gone, in ordinary light. But the penumbra remains.
Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, we read in this week's Torah portion. "Justice, justice you shall pursue." Why the repetition, the rabbis asked? Why does the word "justice" appear twice?

For vigilance, we are told, to remind us to never rest in the pursuit of justice. More. To teach us that life is complex, that justice is hard, that if you think you know all the facts and reasons you are only just beginning. That those who think they know the truth and have the answers may only see the superficial side of the world around them.

More, again. For the verse goes on, the sentence continues. "Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, l'ma'an tichiyeh. Justice, justice you shall pursue -- that you might live..."

One "justice" is for courts and laws and what we do with criminals. What we think of as the judiciary, for the "specialists," for the "system." But the second one is for something else. It is for the ordinary and the everyday. It is for you, and for me. It is for roots, and causes, and living in such a way to reduce the risk, to make the world a safer, better place. With more care, and more tenderness, and more love. "L'ma'an tichiyeh. That you might live."
What, then, can we do? No act of ours can stop a madman. Nor can all the good will in the world put an end to hatred.

Three things we can do. We can build bridges. We can carry on. And we can remember who it is we are called upon to be.
First, we can build bridges. By delighting in differences, not despising them. For the fact remains: when a whole people remains an "other" to us, when we mention a group and they are merely a faceless mob, it is easy to project onto them the shadows of our own soul. All the images of fear and frustration we feel inside, writ large on the innocent screen of someone else. We Jews have been the paradigmatic other, the longest lasting victims of this kind of projection, but we are hardly alone. Blacks, women, gays, anyone who is different, anyone who is other, anyone we do not know well can serve as the anonymous repository of our own neuroses. Or worse.

But when we meet people, when we know them, often -- not always, but often, the fence falls, the anonymity fades, and then, when a group is mentioned, we think not of a mob but of an individual human being. Of a friend, perhaps. And in the sparkling eyes of two people meeting, the glare of hatred fades.

We can carry on. We cannot give in to fear.

Those were the words on the lips of the parents, who brought their children back, to the relocated camp in California. In the face of madness and hate, we are drawn together, determined to fulfill what philosopher Emil Fackenheim called the 614th commandment: "do not let Hitler have a posthumous victory."

Stay home, hide in fear, stop being Jews, stop being Jewish, stop doing Jewish things, stop going to Jewish places and two things happen. First, we descend into our own fantasy world. For this is no place that is safer than any other. And there is no way our enemies will think we are any less Jewish just because we act less Jewish. To a true Jew hater, our Yiddishkeit is not washed away by the baptismal font of assimilated American life.

Secondly, stay home, and the terror wins. It is what they want: that we not be seen, that we not be heard, that we huddle in darkness and shiver in fear. Tears may fall, but we walk tall still. For carrying on is its own answer.

And we can remember who it is we are called upon to be. We should do

more than merely carry on. We should, indeed, fan the flame of faith that glows still inside us. We should answer hatred not with mere persistence, but with an added intensity of commitment.

The other day, at the airport in Washington D.C, on my return from a quick trip to visit my parents on the occasion of my father's 70th birthday, I admit it. I bought that new magazine. You know, the one with Hillary spilling her guts.

Well, in the middle of the premiere issue of Talk magazine was a different article, by a British playwright, entitled (a la Madeline Albright) "On Discovering I Was Jewish." In the article, describing his mother, the author wrote what I found to be a chilling line:

"Being Jewish played no role in my mother's life until it interfered with it."

Sometimes it takes a prod from outside to stir up what is inside. Maybe it takes darkness to remind us to kindle our own light. But we are supposed to be more than bystanders in a benighted world. We have a task, we Jews, and a mission, to be "or lagoyim, a light unto the nations." Not better or even more holy than anyone else. But true to ourselves. As Jews. As partners with God, l'taken et haolam, to mend the world.

And in a place of darkness, to kindle light.

Wake up, America, indeed. Wake up, Jews! Shema, Yisrael. We are, for tomorrow as well as yesterday, in shadow and in light, keepers of a flame, and witnesses in the world.

1999-08-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

Choices and Chances

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

If God is everywhere then, in theory, we can draw lessons about God from every area of life. But doing theology through football has been a bit of a dubious proposition ever since Mark Bravaro of the New York Giants knelt and crossed himself in the end zone after catching a touch down pass in the Super Bowl against the Denver Broncos. What was he saying: that God made that poor Bronco defensive end fall flat on his face in front of millions of fans?

There are those who study every gyration and gesture of their home teams with an intensity once reserved for holy texts. And why not? It's generally harmless, it teaches some sort of cohesion and devotion, it only interferes with the rest of the life a few months out of the year. And football games take place on Sunday afternoon, so they can't possibly interfere with the religious life of ordinary Americans, right?

Um, well. For folks in my neck of the woods, have you had a look at the Buffalo Bills' schedule this year? Is that -- could it be? -- a Bills-Jets game... on Kol Nidrei night? Now, for some time I have stated saying that if the Washington Redskins played the Buffalo Bills on Yom Kippur, we'd have to tape it.

Services, that is.

But I think there is something I should clarify at this point. When I have said this -- I was kidding! But living in Buffalo I now know that to some people, this sport is no joking matter.

So, seriously -- and I mean that -- perhaps there are lessons to be learned from the head-on conflict, the direct collision between a Bills-Jets game, and the single most important service of the Jewish year.

The first and most obvious is this: couldn't the NFL have shown some sensitivity? A 1 pm game, no overtime, and you've still got Kol Nidrei dinner on the table in time. (If someone else cooks it. An entirely separate subject we are not going to go into now.)

But there are other issues here as well. For perhaps the choice we will have to make, between something some of us want to do and something, I admit, that some of us feel we have to do, is really a chance to look into the depth of our lives, and understand one of the deepest messages of Yom Kippur.

"V'anitem et nafshoteichem!" The Biblical commandment calls us, on this day, to "afflict your souls." Tradition teaches that this means not to actually inflict harm or hurt upon ourselves, as would later be the custom in some Christian monastic communities, but to deny ourselves the sustaining forces of everyday life. To transcend the physical. To move beyond the body. To break through, if the process works, to a mystical plane of spirit and soul.

This is a holiday about self-sacrifice. About giving up, if only for a day, our needs and wants and desires. Doing this, while wanting that, is the classic starting position in the observance of Yom Kippur. There is a spiritual value in this longing look towards a stadium while on your way to a synagogue.

Finally, there is an existential value in the conflict as well. A reminder of who we are, and where we live, and the fact that our inner Jewish heart still beats at a slightly different pulse than the world around us. That we dwell, at one and the same time, as a part of, and apart from the landscape of America.

A conflict on a calendar? Or an opportunity to grow? It all depends on which way you look at it. And which tickets you choose to use, on a Sunday night in September.

1999-07-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

Obscenity: A Revision

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

My dictionary defines the word obscene as "1. offensive to one's feelings, or to prevailing notions, of modesty and decency. 2. disgusting; repulsive."

I've always thought the movie rating system was all wrong. Blood is PG, and skin (short of pornography) is R? If we had our values right, it would be the other way around. (Although, it is true: how often in any movie is a married couple seen having sex? It's like sex stops after marriage. Well, there is the Cruise/Kidman movie coming out -- but there it is the actor and actress who are married; I have no idea about the characters. But I digress.)

For what is the true obscenity in our midst? Is it love and intimacy, of which, we remember, sex at its most special is sometimes an expression, and at in its least cheapened depiction can indeed come through in art? Or is it blood and guts and gore, violence which even in its highest depiction has little potential for redemption?

Let me try to be clearer: between blood and skin, one is almost inherently base, the other only in how it is presented. It is not cheap, or dirty, or filthy, or even obscene, in and of itself. Even in art.

So I think the rating system should be revised. That some films with strong sexual content should be rated PG. If the values of intimacy and closeness and relationships come across. And that all of the violent, gory, shoot-em up shockers should be Restricted viewing. I just have a different sense than the censors or the Supreme Court of what I think is obscene.

The other day, my favorite radio program was obscene. I was listening to National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" (aka "No Things Resolved") when one of the hosts interviewed Matt Hale.

WARNING: perhaps those of you who agree with my definition should read no further. For I am going to repeat some of what Matt Hale said. Which means that what follows is going to be obscene.

Matt Hale is the leader of a white supremacist group (they call themselves a church, but apparently reject Christianity since, after all, its founder was a Jew) which preaches that different races are as far apart as different species of animals. This is almost all I heard of the interview: that he believes that whites are one race, that Jews another, blacks another, Asians ("mud people"???) another, and that just as an ant has no concern for a moth, which has no concern for a rat, so, too, the races should be completely segregated, separated, and unconcerned with one another.

Never mind the failure to grasp the concept of an interdependent ecosystem. (And never mind that I guess I thought I was a white guy.) Matt Hale is the leader who inspired Benjamin Nathaniel Smith to go out and shoot at Jews and blacks and Asians. Whose group's leaflets were found on cars in synagogues in Sacramento (which does not automatically link him to the arson attacks there, but it might).

At other times, I have written about strong language, and its affect on action. (See "Tinky Winky and Us," for one example.) Some readers have objected: I am confusing words with acts, that just because someone expresses disdain or demeaning thoughts about one whole group does not mean they are the cause of someone else actually attacking that group.

The objection is noted. And rejected. With an amendment. There is, perhaps, a difference between guilt and responsibility. And where free speech is and should be allowed, only the one who pulled the trigger, who tossed the match, who built the bomb, who strung up the gay man on the fence or dragged the black man to death on the back of the car is actually guilty. But there are other arenas of morality besides actual guilt.

Yes, I believe in free speech, and it is a truism that the first amendment by definition protects speech we find offensive -- perhaps even obscene -- for speech we agree with needs little protection.

But there is a category of incitement that goes beyond speech, and touches on action. Just as you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, I wonder about those who pave the path, who fan the flames of hate, who know even while smiling their despicable smiles and secretly thanking the media for giving their message more exposure that their protestations of nonviolence are hollow, empty lies, that they rejoice indeed when one of their own strikes out in physical attacks -- and the leaders themselves are wrapped in cozy security. Their goal of attacking others is accomplished, someone else sits in jail, they carry on, and mock the world as they enjoy the protections of freedoms they themselves don't believe should ever have been extended to anyone other than themselves.

When we engage in the rhetoric of hate, of demeaning speech, I believe that we do bear partial responsibility for what flows from our words. Even if we are not guilty in the same way as the one we might inspire to do something we ourselves have not done.

So I am listening to "All Things Considered" the other day. I hear this thug spout his racist filth and I want to throw up. What he is saying: to me it's obscene. It's evil. How can "they" even put that on the air? Where was the censor when we needed one?

I'll tell you where the censor was. He was driving the car. I was alone in the car. No kids in the back seat. No one else to hear who might be influenced in ways I would not want. I reached out my hand... and I turned the volume up.

Because this obscenity is not art. It is real. It is dangerous. It is out there. Not broadcasting it won't make it go away. So the next question is: what will?

1999-05-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

Directions and Destiny

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, NY

Q: Why did Moses lead the Jewish people for forty years in the wilderness?
A: Because he wouldn't ask for directions.

It had been some time since I had taken an international flight. As I traveled to Belgium for my brother's wedding a couple of months ago, I settled into my seat, shot a concerned glance at the group that was drinking and talking at the top of their lungs, worried about whether I would getany sleep at all on the overnight trip, fished out the least interesting reading material I could handle in the hopes of dozing off despite the non-stop talkers... and found myself staring at the screen on the seat in front of me in absolute fascination.

Having pushed the wrong button somehow, there was now a map on the screen in front of me. It shifted perspectives every few seconds, but the point was the same. The map showed the terrain below us. It showed where we had come from. It showed where the plane currently was en route. And, in a dotted line into the future, it showed the route we were going to take. I hadn't seen anything like this on my previous trips to Europe. Or to Israel. And, to be sure, our ancestors had nothing like this during their wanderings in the wilderness.

What a marvelous thing! A map, to show where we've been. Where we are. And where we are going. If only we could have something like this in life.

Except for this. The line behind is solid. It is the path we have traveled. The plan that has worked. The past that is fixed. Where we are is a flashing point. A best-guess approximation. As we learn from Quantum Mechanics: you can never know everything about where we are. You can know a particles speed, and its charge, but not its position. Or a different combination. But not all three. You cannot know everything, all at once, about the moment that is. The place we are in. The people you are with. Even the person you are. As in all experiments, focusing on the self distorts the picture. Awareness affects the outcome. All analysis is analogy. The picture of the plane in its present location flashed on and off. As we move in and out of our own balance between action and consciousness.

And the future? What more could it be, than a dotted line? The best laid plan. Our hopes and dreams and expectations, broken by the not-yet reality we are about to meet.And would you really want the future to be a solid line, even if it could be?

A story. Joseph is sent to meet his brothers. He sets out to find them, where once they were. But they were a moving target. They had changed location. Quantum particles whom he could not know completely, they were nowhere to be found. Joseph wanders and wonders. Alone in the field.

But he is not alone. He comes across a "man." And he asks about his brothers.

"Oh," the man said, "I heard them say something about going to Dothan." So Joseph changes course. Finds his brothers. And fulfills his destiny. Because he met a man, while wandering in a field.

We know nothing more of the man. But think about it. If it had not been for that man, Joseph would not have found his brothers. If he had not found his brothers, he would not have been thrown in a pit. If not for the pit, he would not have been sold to slavery, brought down to Egypt, served in Potiphar's house, been the victim of sexual harassment, landed in prison.

If he had not landed in prison, he would not have met the butler and the baker, not have interpreted their dreams, never met Pharaoh. If he had never met Pharaoh, he would not have risen to prime minister of Egypt, would not have made plans for the famine, would not have been there to meet his brothers when they came begging for bread.

Had he not met his brothers then they would not have moved to Egypt, we would not have become slaves, we would not have needed Moses. If there had been no Moses to lead us out of slavery, we would not have crossed the sundered sea, and we would not have stood at Sinai. Had we not stood at Sinai, there would have been no Torah.

All because... of an accidental encounter in a field, when a brother was looking for something, and found something altogether different.

The future is a dotted line. Plans and hopes and dreams broken by our encounter with reality. Broken... and shaped anew. It is, perhaps, up to us to make new meaning of the accidents in our lives. So that our detours and diversions lead us still to places we want to be.
Q: Why did Moses lead the Jewish people for forty years in the wilderness?

A: Because, whether we knew it or not, that is where we needed to be.

A map on a seat, and a lesson for life. Planes may land in Brussels. But on an overnight flight with little rest I learned once again... that everything leads to Torah.

1999-04-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

Chesed (Kindness):

A Jewish Response to Littleton

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, NY

When a meteorologist says, "Wow, there's a lot of weather out there," she doesn't mean its a bright and sunny day. On the same theory: wow, there's a lot of news out there these days. War and peace in Kosovo and the world. High stake elections in Israel. Ground zero of the abortion wars, right here in Buffalo, New York (more on "Operation Save America" -- sic/sick -- another time).

And then came Colorado. The paradox of shock. There is so much to say we are stunned into silence.

My first reaction, the first reaction of many of us, was indeed shock. The second, perhaps, if only for a moment, was relief (and then guilt at the feeling of relief): it was far away (for most of us). It wasn't "here." It wasn't our children. But then the disbelief returns. For at some level these were our children. They are all our children. Some schools are doing a wonderful job, now, in providing places to talk. In helping children cope with tragedy on a mass scale. But time passes and the headlines fade. A famine or a draught, a new scandal in Washington, and all this will be off the headlines, and out of our minds.

Yet the task remains at hand.

Our society has so very many pressures. For high scores and good grades, for grace of body and quickness of wit, for appearance and accomplishment. It is so hard to grow up in the midst of these pressures, to find one's own place in the pull of subliminal messages. To know who you are, and connect with others: sex mistaken for intimacy, identity confused with popularity, friendship tossed aside for a better offer with a cooler crowd. We teach our kids so much in so many unintentional ways. Have we forgotten to teach our kids to be kind?

A story of a woman. We'll call her Judy Cohen. It's not her name. But the story is real. And in one form or another, this has happened to more than one person I know.When Judy Cohen was in sixth grade, she began to develop some deformities. Her body shook in weird ways. Her speech was slurred. Her self-image shattered. The kids in her school were unspeakably cruel to her. Her public school -- and her synagogue's religious school. But there was a difference. In the public school, officials acted. They threatened the kids who were the most cruel to her with expulsion. And the problems eased. Not completely. But enough.

And her synagogue's school? Well, what could they do? All we can do is beg our parents to send their children in the first place. Don't throw away a 4000 year old heritage because your kid prefers to play hockey. We beg. We plead. We accommodate. We have no teeth. Expel a kid? For some of our sixth graders (a minority, but some), let's face it. It would be their dream come true.

Things may be a bit better in our religious schools these days. A little bit. But we have few teeth. The cruelty of one child to another is simply worse in a setting where some kids feel forced to attend. For Judy Cohen, at least in her mind, the cruelty eased in public school. In religious school it did not.

Judy Cohen grew out of her problems. She developed more confidence. She grew to have friends. She grew to love her life. Judy Cohen is very, very active in her spiritual community today. They really feel like they couldn't do without her. She came to see its importance because, in college, she found a group that simply welcomed her the way she was. In love. In acceptance. In true community.

Judy Cohen is very active in her spiritual community today. And her Presbyterian Church, they sure are glad to have her.

You know, kindness isn't just superficial stuff. Before we can fill our heads with facts, we must be in a place we feel we belong. But kindness is not just the prerequisite we need in order to learn. Warmth and welcome, kindness to one another is the substance of what we must learn. It is both: the first commandment of community, and the most lasting lesson of life.

Judy Cohen doesn't live in Colorado. And she overcame her problems. But those who feel unwelcome, unwanted, unloved... they are all around us. It will take big hearts to make sure that there is never another Littleton.

"Yitgadal, v'yitkadash...." I don't have a lot to say about Littleton. Only everything.

1999-04-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Memories of Yugoslavia

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, NY

I pick up the paper and shiver. In my case, the political really is personal. For once, nearly two decades ago, I nearly died on a mountain pass in Yugoslavia. Somewhere between Macedonia and Albania. Somewhere,
where people are dying today. I had gone to Yugoslavia for, well, vacation. I was in the middle of my junior year of college, was studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, had toured around parts of Israel already, and, on the break between semesters, took my backpack and traveler's checks and headed off
to Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It was January of 1981. The Iron Wall still stood. But you could fly to Athens from Tel Aviv... and back to Tel Aviv from Bucharest, and somehow, the idea of doing a circle tour and exploring a little bit of Eastern Europe took on a tremendous appeal. My first stop in the communist world was Skopje, Macedonia. We had been traveling all night, through Thessalonika, Greece. We were tired, and still in transit, so my memories of Skopje are blurred, but I remember an old market area, a blend of cultures, my first encounters with Gypsies, pictures of Tito all over the place, and having a really hard time (more so than anywhere I had yet been in my life) finding anyone who spoke English. I vaguely remember meeting some Fulbright scholars studying something or other, trying to order dinner and learning my first phrase of Serbo-Croatian:
"bes meso" which means either "without meat" or "we can only afford the cheapest pizza you got." But as I see the refugees and riots, the stone throwing crowds and the cars set aflame, I remember the city. "I've been there," something inside me says as another image flashes across CNN. It's that déjà vu kind of thing, when a piece of your life and a piece of history touch and you stare speechless at the smallness of the world.

From Skopje, we took an overnight bus bound for Dubrovnik, once a shining jewel on the Adriatic in what is now Croatia. It was there, on that trip, somewhere in the mountains, that we nearly died.

It was snowing. It was really cold. We were up in the mountains somewhere, and one of the passengers was playing Arabic music on a boom box really loudly, all night long. Around 3 am we went through a tunnel in
the mountains... and at the other end there was a truck, stopped in the middle -- and I mean the middle -- of the narrow road... with no one in it. On the left was a sheer cliff leading up. On the right was a sheer
drop. The driver attempted to go around the truck to the right. Halfway through, we hit the truck. Windows began to crack. In some agitated language we did not understand, the driver then ordered everyone off the bus. We exited, with about a foot to spare on this side of the cliff... we huddled behind the bus... and some of the men then put their hands on the bus... and started leaning it away from the truck.

The bus, with all of our belongings on it, now had its top tilted over the cliff. Had it tumbled over the side, we could have died there that night. Instead, the men slid the bus past the truck, put it back on all
its wheels, and gestured the group to get back on board. The rest of the ride to the industrial city of Titograd, and eventually to Dubrovnik, was less exciting. But, somehow, I minded the music a whole lot less than I had.

So I nearly died in Yugoslavia one night. If I had, I would hardly have been alone. Then, or now. For people are dying in Yugoslavia as I write these words. People are dying. And dreams are dead. Dreams -- of a time when different cultures could live together, and appreciate each other, live and let live, thrive and survive together at one and the same time. I saw a Croatian dance troupe in Dubrovnik. Saw mosques and markets in Sarajevo. Strolled the banks of the Danube in Belgrade. Everywhere I went, I saw faces mixed and mingled, different smells and hair and languages somehow managing, the powder keg of nationalist pride and ethnic hatred held in check by a delicate dance of promises, and the lingering legacy of a single man whose picture was everywhere.

Unlike my father (who is a Sovietologist and knows something of the area) I am not an expert in the Balkans. And the Balkans baffle even experts. I don't know what to make of what is going on right now. It sure seems from the outside as if some Serbs will slaughter anything that moves. The atrocities being reported are beyond belief...if we Jews did not know all too well that news from Europe which seems beyond belief should be given some possibility of credence nonetheless. I wonder if this is how people felt on hearing the first hints of atrocities a half century ago.

But: this might not be such a black and white conflict. Last Sunday's New York Times ran a long discussion of the history of the Serbian-Albanian conflict dating back to the fourteenth century! There are those who remember (including one of the New York Times' regular columnists) Serbs fighting the Nazis -- and Albanians fighting with them. And: should we Jews not be a bit cautious about an international organization declaring -- and enforcing -- the idea that territory sacred to one group and under its control should be largely ceded to another group because they make up the majority of the population in that region at the moment? And maybe the Ethnic Albanians are harboring terrorists and committing crimes we hear
nothing about. Would you want the KLA as neighbors? Are you sure? We read news reports of Serb atrocities and cringe in echoes and analogies we fear to use. How accurate are the reports? Or how biased?

I don't know. And I don't know how to find out. But for all the caveats, sometimes I know a moral crisis when I see one. Once, on a boat ride in Miami, during the beginning of the conflict in Bosnia, I met two Serb academicians who swore that the Muslims killed their own people and then called in reporters in order to make the Serbs look bad. I had heard the same claim made about Israelis. Let's kill our own, and blame Palestinian terrorists. I didn't buy a word of it then either. If the Western media reports are even half accurate, maybe it is time for ground troops after all. Knowing that neither side are angels. But to stop the slaughter. Whoever is committing it. Not because of national interest. Because of a moral imperative. For when we Jews said "never again," we meant never again... to anyone.

The course is not easy. Risk runs high whatever decisions we make. For the Balkans have been, to use a purely scientific term, a bloody mess, for an awfully long time. Any act is a step into a quagmire. Not acting
at all... may well be worse. All I know for sure are two things. The one is political. The other is personal. The first is something I have said and written about before. It is pretty easy to build yourself up by putting someone else down. The easiest way to promote your own identity is to stress what makes you different -- and better -- than another group. It is the easiest path --and the most dangerous. If history teaches anything at all it is this: inevitably, invariably, a group that disparages, demeans and denies another group's way of life will some day, somehow, seek to deny that other group's right to life. The harder, but healthier path to promote your own identity lets you live with others who are different. It is pride -- without prejudice. It is a sense of self-worth that is inherent, absolute -- and not comparative. A bridge in Sarajevo. Ethnic hatred. This country provided the scene and the spark for one World War. I hope and pray that the same simmering cauldron of hate is not the stew for yet another.

The second thing I know is this. Mixed in with anger and outrage and the heat of passionate emotions is a hint of something else. There are those who yearn still for the Germany they knew before Hitler. For the
civilized society they thought they had. I have nothing so strong as that. Just the nostalgia of a passing tourist, the fast fading recollections of a backpacking student of yesterday.

I nearly died on a mountain in Yugoslavia. But I miss the country I saw. The mountains and the sea, the ethnic festivals and celebrations, the blend of heritage and history. The hint, if only for a time, of hatred
held in check. I miss the Yugoslavia of yesterday. And I know it will never be again.

1999-01-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Letter from a Murderer

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach
Temple Beth Am
Williamsville, New York

I got a letter from a murderer the other day. And I'm starting to lose sleep over it.

Not that the letter was threatening to me personally. It was merely threatening to my sense of order in the universe.

A number of years ago I wrote a column called "The Kaddish and the Grateful Dead." The column was picked up and reprinted recently by AOL writer Gil Mann, in his publication Being Jewish. And that is why I got a letter this week.

In the column I tried to spell out some of the background assumptions behind the development of the Kaddish as a mourner's prayer, and to do so I needed to touch on the elusive and little-known Jewish views of life after death. At the time, I wrote the following words: "The ultimate evildoers (murderers, rapists, idolaters) will not be admitted to the world to come. Nor, however, will they be punished forever. They will simply cease to be." Now, I stand by those words. They are an accurate description of what our tradition has to say on this subject. Only I suppose, in hindsight, it is important to emphasize that this part of our tradition is highly speculative. It is not a mandated belief.

Well, actually, that is an oversimplification, and might be worth another column altogether. There are strands of our tradition which do seek to require this belief. But I still see this discussion of the afterlife as Jewish lore -- it is still not on the same level as Jewish law. (Unless you are from New York City, in which case you say "law" and "lore" the same way.)

Whatever the exact status of this subject in Jewish tradition -- integral part of the system or speculation about the nature of reality -- I personally believe that anyone who claims to know for sure the details of what will happen to any of us in a world to come is probably trying to sell a book. The word "mystery" is for a world shrouded in mist. We hope. We pray. But we just don't know.

Then comes this letter, with the following challenge: "As a convicted murderer it is dismaying to think that the promises of salvation and forgiveness mentioned in the Psalms and elsewhere do not for some reason apply to me. I led a righteous life for X years, when worn down and exhausted I lost it in a crime of passion for 55 seconds of my life. Then, having gone to our Creator with a broken spirit and contrite heart, learn about my heritage and defend it. It seems rather arrogant and contrary to scripture that someone should pick categories of sin and pass a judgment of so foul a consequence. If an idolater may not change, convert to Judaism or otherwise be forgiven and live a meaningful life, what's the point of it all? He may as well continue to commit the most heinous crimes having not so much to lose."

Hmn.
Well, my immediate response was a bit defensive, of course. Hey, don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger! (Perhaps, in context, this is not the best of sayings to use here.) I didn't pick these categories. And, more
to the point: in Jewish terms they are hardly "contrary to Scripture." Something that comes from the Talmud is considered "Oral Torah." In tradition this is not contrary to Scripture, but an elaboration and explication of it.

But my quick response begs the question. The real issue here is a profound challenge. What does Judaism have to say... to a repentant murderer? Before reading on (not that I have a definitive answer), take a moment to yourselves. What would you say? And what do you think Jewish tradition would say to a shedder of blood, who comes to God with broken heart and contrite spirit?

An image comes to mind. It is of Bud Welch, who is circling the country, speaking out against the death penalty for Timothy McVeigh. The man lost his daughter in the Oklahoma City bombing. But, he says, he is a
religious person. And he "forgives" McVeigh.

Please. Does anyone else have the same problem with this that I do? Never mind that forgiveness is a two-way street, that is supposed to be an end product of a period of repentance and reconciliation, that it is utterly meaningless (at least, the way we Jews think of it) absent an expression of remorse and regret. No, the problem goes even deeper than the fact that McVeigh might still do the same thing all over again. Even if he McVeigh were sorry, and even if Bud Welch can go on with his life -- for which, by the way, I am glad, for I cannot imagine his pain, nor how hard his own spiritual journey has been, still -- it isn't in Bud Welch's hands to grant forgiveness. The problem with murder is this. Forgiveness must come from the one we have offended. Guess what. Kill someone, and they can't forgive you. Not in this world. Not in this life. Sorry, Charlie. You can't make murder OK.

In this way, murder is different from idolatry. You can repent from that, lead a better life, and Jewish tradition says -- regarding converts, in a blunt and not-too diplomatically worded injunction -- that we are not supposed to remind them of their "pork-eating, idol worshipping past." (Remember: by idolatry we mean idolatry --paganism and polytheism; Judaism considers both Christianity and Islam to be sibling monotheistic religions.) A story is told of the time just before the execution of Adolph Eichman, in Israel. You remember Eichman the mastermind of the Final Solution. This is the only time in all of Israel's history that the death penalty was carried out. (Demjanjuk was convicted and sentenced to death, but then released.) Israel has capital punishment on its books only for genocide. (This has to be the case. There has to be an incentive for a terrorist holding a group of children hostage to give up, to face a different outcome if he releases the children than if he shoots them and goes down with them.) Reportedly, a pastor came to Eichman, to speak with him before the execution. The pastor was confronted afterwards by a reporter who was a Holocaust survivor: "What happened? Will Eichman go to heaven?" The pastor replied something like: "If he accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, yes." The reporter asked: "Well, what about the million children that Eichman slaughtered. You know the answer. It was this: Well, they did not accept Jesus. No. They don't go to heaven.

Judaism is not like this version of Christianity. (Actually, much of Christianity is not like that version of Christianity either.) Judaism is different. For us, what we do matters. Not just how we feel about it. So what hope is there? If you have murdered once, why not kill again? What difference does it make?

We can find a hint of hope, I believe, in the commentary, in the margin of the page, in the fact that Jewish law is ultimately met by the uncertainty of the future, for sinner and saint alike. This is what I mean. We are told that to save a life, we can violate any commandment but three. If someone points a gun to your head and says: eat that bacon cheeseburger during Pesach or I'll blow you away, well, say the motzi and dive in. The same is true of any other commandment save three, the three I mentioned earlier: murder, sexual immorality (rape and incest) and idolatry. In these cases, even if someone is threatening your life, you do not give in. You don't murder someone innocent to save yourself. How do you know your blood is redder than his (or hers)? So someone asks: well, what if you do? What if you bow down to an idol in public? What if you even -- God forbid -- kill an innocent, to save your own life? I remember reading the answer. It was Rambam, I believe, who said that in such a case, who are we human beings to judge what to make of such a person? There are some things, he said, which God is going to have to sort out, at the time of reckoning.

And maybe...just maybe... we can stretch the case... to cover even a repentant murderer.

After consultation, after thinking about it, after asking colleagues for help, this is what I will try to say, to the man who wrote me that letter: Nothing can change the past. And nothing can make up for what you have done. But in real repentance, in true contrition, lead your life from now on in the best way that you can -- whatever your circumstances -- and as the best person you can be. And we can hope, and we can pray, that when you -- or any of us -- do meet our maker, God will know what is in our heart, as well as what our hands have done.

It is not a guarantee. It is not a sure thing. It is a mystery, and a challenge...and a matter of faith.

I don't know if that's my final answer. What would you say?

1998-11-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

A Murder in Buffalo: On the Assasination of Dr. Bart Slepian

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am,

Williamsville (Buffalo), New York

Dear Friends and Readers: This past Rosh Hashanah, here, in this column, and in remarks addressed to my congregation, I wrote the following words:

“What is the difference, what is the gap, between celebrities and famous people, betweeen a Rosa Parks or Lech Walesa or Nelson Mandela, and you, and me? Is it real power? Is it the scale and stage on which their lives unfold?

It is neither. The gap is unreal, the difference illusion. It is only the accidental focusing of the lens of history. All that separates your daily routine from a history book of the future is chance, and opportunity. So be prepared. A moment may come. A building may burn. A phone may ring. A movement may start from a casual comment. For better or for worse, your time, your turn may come with no warning at all."

I wish I had not been so prophetic. For the lights that go with that lens can glare brightly indeed. And this past week, the lens of history has been focused with great intensity on my community, on my congregation, and, in particular, on a grieving family in my synagogue.

I open with excruciatingly painful irony: on the very day that would later see a good man shot dead, I received a phone call from another congregant. Her daughter is eighteen weeks pregnant. She is a diabetic, so it was a high risk pregnancy to boot. The fetus has now developed a very large tumor. Some treatments that might have been possible are precluded by her diabetes. The fetus stands little chance of surviving. The pregnancy may pose a danger to her life. Her Catholic ob/gyn, in personal agony, is advising her to terminate her pregnancy.

That was a week ago Friday, during the day. Then came Friday night.

Yes, Bart Slepian and his family were members of Temple Beth Am of Williamsville. But they were relatively recent members, having come over from Temple Beth El (Conservative) around two and a half years ago. (The synagogue they attended that night was Beth El... because his father's name was read for yahrtzeit this shabbat at that synagogue). In addition, I am fairly new in the Buffalo area, having come to Beth Am only in August of 1997. So, although I officiated at Brian's (the second oldest of the four boys) bar mitzvah last year, I did not know the family too well. The family remains personal friends of their former rabbi, Rabbi Robert Eisen. I officiated at the funeral along with our Cantor, Barbara Ostfeld; Bob did the eulogy. The most powerful words at the funeral came from Dr. Slepian's niece, Amanda Robb, who lost her own father when she was very young, who was cared for as a daughter by her uncle Bart Slepian, and who addressed herself to Dr. Slepian's four boys, ages 15, 13, 10 and 8. When she was done speaking, I was, simply, sobbing. I am glad I did not have to stand up to follow her; no sound would have come out of my mouth. She spoke of the boys' father as the last star they would see at night. But I can not -- and should not -- convey more of what she said.

What I do know about Bart Slepian is this: to portray him as an "abortionist" is an added obscenity on top of a nightmare. He was not "pro-abortion," he was pro-health care. I am told that he was troubled by a complex moral issue, that his greatest joy was bringing babies into the world -- he was a fertility specialist, for God's sake -- one of Rabbi Eisen's comments was that he cared for women, "he delivered their babies, and he saved their lives." My friends who were his patients tell me that he was caring in a rare and old fashioned kind of way -- showing up to be with them when they had unrelated procedures performed by other physicians, spending whatever time was needed and not making you feel part of a medical factory. Abortions were probably five percent of his work. Maybe less.

To say this has been a big story would be to call Niagara Falls large rapids. I have never before witnessed press harassment to this degree. There is no other word for it, except, perhaps, exploitation. When the media could not speak directly with the family, they went anywhere else they could. My wife Julie had to have received sixty calls at home, at all hours of day and night, and we received an equal or greater number at the congregation. Cameras and reporters showed up on Sunday morning, Religious School was disrupted, reporters walked into our offices and sat down to use our phones. That is minor, compared to the casing out of the family's home, the long distance lenses used at burial, and the gauntlet of satellite dishes and cameras the mourner's had to run in order to reach the funeral home.

In the meantime, in the midst of tragedy comes a bandwagon effect of another kind... of people feeling a need to express something, and being unsure how to do so, or what to do. Being with the family here, I see a fine line between the undeniable... I hate to use this word... but "opportunity" that this singular moment, this window in time offers those who believe in a cause -- and the fact that the family doesn't give a hoot about causes at the moment, and needs their space. Call it the prophetic versus the pastoral, if you will; I have never felt that conflict so keenly before.

And so, "events" are happening all around us, as different groups a) feel the need or b) seize the opportunity to express themselves. Many organizations in Buffalo have learned about the concept of shivah (the traditional seven day period of intense mourning) this week -- don't plan a community memorial service until the family can be involved, and leave them alone for right now. Of course, this flies in the face of everyone's desire to get something down on their calendars and move forward fast, while the emotion is high and the wound is fresh. I have heard about three different dates for events, scheduled by God knows whom for God knows what purpose.

On the communal front, can we come to some common understanding with other religious communities? Rabbinic colleagues of mine met late last week with a representative of the Buffalo Area Metropolitan Ministries. They clearly conveyed the balance between the needs of the family and the needs of the community to do... something. They have planned a Vigil Against Violence, as some kind of communal response that would not necessarily involve the family's input. But it will be a silent vigil. For what words could be said that someone would not disagree with? To be blunt: could other faith communities come forward and condemn this violence, without also attacking what they consider to be violence in a different form, the performance of abortions? Sadly, perhaps not. And would we stand for any statement that equated the murder of a real human being with a medical procedure? Of course not. We want to come together as a whole community. And so only silence stakes out our common ground.

I did make one mistake this past week -- at least, one that I am presently aware of. A woman called our congregation, and identified herself only be her first name. She said she was a member of a local Catholic church. She asked about the Jewish position on abortion. Foolishly, putting our own community at risk, I answered her. (And I will address this subject in an upcoming column as well. It is actually a complex question, but I will make two comments now. First, Judaism does not consider abortion to be the equivalent of murder. And secondly, there are times where all branches of Judaism would agree that an abortion is not a choice, but is required. But more on this later.) I am fairly certain that no harm will come of answering her questions; still, what I should have done was demand her last name, call her priest, and assure myself that she was, indeed, who she said she was. For we live in a world of madness. And you never know where danger lurks.

A family grieves. And everyone around them has an agenda.

It is hard not to walk a little taller, to stand a little straighter when the lens of history focuses on you. Exploitation meets temptation. But cursed be the one -- whoever it is, the friend, the neighbor, the activist, the politician, the colleague, the clergy person -- cursed be the one who forgets that the family comes first.

The question remains, and many have asked: what can we do? Well, a cause survives. The family has asked that donations be made to the Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, P.O. Box 461, Buffalo, New York, 14209.

There is so much more to say, and there are no words adequate to the moment. All I will add for now is this: may each one of us go home every day and say to those around us three simple words that cannot be said enough, nor heard enough. "I love you." For we never know what tomorrow may bring.

L'Shalom (in peace)

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

1998-09-02T15:26:00.000-07:00

Low Brush With Fame

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

Friends of mine are fond of the phrase "a low brush with fame." I have never been sure exactly what they meant by it, but here is what I think it means: you have some kind of encounter with someone which, through their merit and not through yours, is somehow catapulted into fame. Or infamy.

Maybe it doesn't mean that. Maybe it just means boarding a plane and passing Ed Koch and Pete Rose, sitting next to each other in First Class. But I'll take my definition. That's because, by my definition, my wife and I had not one, but two low brushes with fame of the same sort in a single week.

Both involve a story of sadness, although one, as it turns out, was temporary, and the other might not be. But they are of the same type. For last week, this AOL columnist learned that remarks we had made or encounters we have had were referred to in two published columns in other places.

Both incidents had to do with our long journey towards fertility. Both references were completely incidental to the columnists point. But we learned of them in the same week. A bizarre coincidence? Or a profound lesson for the coming Days of Awe? You be the judge. (Well, God is the Judge, although I think Kenneth Starr thinks that he is, but you get the idea.)

The first: at the Reform movement's annual rabbinic convention this past June, we wound up sitting at a breakfast table next to the terrific comedian Rabbi Bob Alper ("the only clergy person in America doing stand up comedy -- intentionally.") The opportunity was too good to pass up. My wife, as politely as possible, asked if she could share something with him. He was very gracious about being interrupted. She then told him that when she had had her first miscarriage, unexpectedly (of course) when she was visiting her sister in Chicago several days before Rosh Hashanah while we lived in Erie, was not immediately allowed to travel, and had to return home, alone, on Rosh Hashanah itself, during this incredibly difficult time, on a long drive from the Cleveland airport where she had gotten a cheap fare to Chicago, back to Erie, crying and miserable, she had popped his tape into the tape deck. And she had, miraculously, actually laughed. She has waited through another miscarriage, and two beautiful boys, to have the chance to tell Bob Alper what he meant to her at that moment. And she wasn't going to miss the opportunity to tell him.

Who could not be moved by such a compliment. I had a different occasion to speak with Rabbi Alper last week. He called me about something. And he read me a copy of an interview he had just done with the Jerusalem Post, in which he mentioned my wife's comment. Low Brush With Fame Number One.

The second was under sadder circumstances, but remarkably similar nonetheless. A close friend of mine, a quite liberal Protestant minister in his mid- 60's, was recently diagnosed with ALS -- Lou Gehrig's Disease. It is a mild form, slow progressing, and all that is affected -- and all that should be affected for many years to come -- is his speech. When I spoke with him recently, he told me that he had written an in depth column detailing his experiences with the diagnosis, treatment, and reaction to the disease. His words are truly moving, a great testimony to the human spirit. My friend lives in Connecticut. His primary care is now managed through the University of Connecticut Medical Center north of Hartford. And in his article, he writes "My only [prior] contact with the facility was the parking lot. I once picked up friends from Pennsylvania there. They were having difficulty conceiving a baby and were told that for their particular problem there was only one doctor who could help them, and she was at the UConn Medical Center. That was three years ago, and they now have two children..."

Actually, we went there to check out something that might have been contributing to the miscarriages, but turned out not to be, but the exact point isn't important. We're fine. And I am concerned about my friend, moved by his column but shaken by his news. Nevertheless, coming in the same week, that was Low Brush with Fame Number Two.

It's odd to think that chance encounters and comments over breakfast came make their way into some kind of permanent, published record. It's odd, that is, unless you are a Jew in September. With the High Holy Days looming over the horizon.

For is this not the very theme of these coming Days of Awe? That everything we say, everything we do, every move you make... somehow, somewhere, someone (read: some One) is watching you. In some karma-like connection with Eternity, our mortal acts and words are, if not published in a column, then recorded in a Book. Entered into our (do you remember this from Kindergarten?) Permanent Record.

Be careful, if you are a friend of mine. Maybe I will write about you in one of my columns. When you have forgotten what you have said. When you least expect it.

Be careful, if you are a human being. There is One who writes Columns in the Sky. And that One doesn't miss deadlines like I do. That One makes the Deadlines (so to speak). And the Lifelines. "You open the book of our days, and what is written there proclaims the signature... of every human being."

Forget whether the Secret Service agents can testify. Forget the fact that you are sure you can get away with something. Even all alone, God is watching you.

So be careful out there. And be careful in here. Have a healthy, happy year. And if someone does put your name in the news -- may it only be for good things!

1998-08-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

The Amen Kid

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

I really have no idea how the whole thing got started. Was it a Friday night reaction to a candle blessing? A random prayer when I least suspected he was listening?

Well, however it happened, the concept seems firmly entrenched now. For about the past five months, one of my 21-month old son Benjamin's first truly surprising and consistent displays of vocabulary has been the word "Amen." At first, he said it whenever he saw a candle. Then, he started saying in the synagogue, running into the Sanctuary, up to the bimah, and squealing "Amen" with delight. Now he says it on seeing a shofar, a yarmulke, or on even driving by the shul. When Julie tells him I am going to work, he now as often as not will say: "Daddy, bye-bye, amen." I'm sorry. I know I'm biased. But I still think it's pretty adorable.

What Benjamin probably doesn't get yet -- and many other people do not realize, either -- is that the word "amen" means, basically, "I agree." It comes from the same Hebrew root as the word "emunah," which means faith. It s exact meaning, in the context of prayer, is as follows: "someone has done or said something for you that you were also obligated to do; they have done so in public and on behalf of a group of people; they are allowed to do so because they were also bound by the same obligation; they have said the prayer or performed the act correctly, and you have faith both that the deed was done right, and that the doer of the deed is fit to represent you. You are therefore not obligated to recite the entire prayer or perform the act yourself; the other person has served as your surrogate."

All that... from one little word.

But, alas, whenever two or more people interact, there is power at work somehow. And where there is power involved, there is politics at play.

So what are the politics of the word "amen." It comes in two forms. First, the whole notion of women's equality in Judaism. And second, the issue of the authenticity of non-Orthodox Judaism.

In traditional Judaism, the question of leading certain acts on behalf of the community depends on a sense of mutual obligation. The reason that women cannot lead most prayers (or at least, cannot do so when men are present) is that for women, the recitation of the daily prayer service is allowed. It is even, perhaps, desirable. What it is not, however, is obligatory.

For women are exempt from (almost) all mitzvot (commandments) that have to be performed at a certain time -- and the prayer service is such a commandment. They had other (the rationalization was "higher") duties. They took care of children. And, of course, as I know all too well now, it is hard to stick to a schedule when dealing with young kids.

The logic, then, seems simple. Women are allowed to pray, but not required to do so. Men are obligated to do so, in specific ways. Since only one who is bound by the same level of obligation can exempt others, can lead others who, in saying "amen," will then be exempt from their obligations, that is why women cannot lead prayers in traditional Judaism.

So, you would argue, if there were a prayer that women were bound by, in the same way as men, then they could lead that prayer. In public. And men could say "amen." Right?

Wrong. As it happens, there is such a prayer. It is called the Kiddush, the blessing over the wine on Friday nights. Traditional Judaism has determined that men and women are equally bound by the obligation to recite this blessing. But. While acknowledging that, in theory, women could lead the kiddush, traditional commentators have said that it brings shame on a community if this happens. And so I at, least, come to the conclusion that the traditional argument fails its own test case.

In the end, I believe that all the fancy footwork and seemingly logical arguments about why men can't say "amen" to a prayer led by a women are just excuses. The secondary status of women came first. The "amen" explanation came later.

On to the second item. The issue of the ritual role of women is only one item in the creative (in the best sense) although agonizing (in that it leads to so much tension) dispute between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Judaism. There are other disagreements, the largest of which is about the very legitimacy and authenticity of the non-Orthodox movements. And in this issue, as well, our simple word plays a rather large role.

Slightly more than a decade ago, while a rabbinical student in New York, visiting the Lower East Side of Manhattan trying to find a particular Jewish bookstore that had not yet moved uptown, I stumbled across the largest group of traditional Jews I had ever encountered. As soon as I saw the crowds, I knew what I must be witnessing. I had come across the funeral of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.

Rabbi Feinstein was one of the greatest Torah sages of our time. His stature was almost unequaled among Orthodox Jews of either the centrist or traditionalist camps. He found brilliant and creative answers to many issues. His loss left a gaping hole in Jewish scholarship and life.

And yet, I cannot help but recall a single one of his rulings. It was this. That for those who followed his rulings... it was forbidden for a traditional Jew to say "amen" after a prayer recited by a Reform or Conservative rabbi.

This stunning statement, in one, single sentence, is an attack on the very foundation of non-Orthodox Judaism. While I respected Rabbi Feinstein for his knowledge and his depth, I find it hard to get passed his delegitimization of everything that I write, or think, or pray, or say.

Part of what "amen" means is that we share an equal level of obligation. But the other part... is that we have faith in the person we are with, who does something for us. And, apparently, Rabbi Feinstein took on faith that he could not have faith is anything done by a non-Orthodox colleague.

Struggles, to figure out what it is that God wants of us. That, to me, is the essence of the dispute between different branches of Judaism. We share the same goal. We stand in the same place. We are bound together by a common past and what is still likely to be a shared fate in this world. I have faith in the honesty, in the integrity, in the spirituality and essential authenticity of other branches of Judaism, even where I disagree with particular practices (such as the secondary status of women). I only wish it were easier... to say "amen" to one another.

Faith. Trust. And a sense that we share not only a moment, an obligation, a burden. But a history. A way of looking at the world. A deep and profound connection. All this is found in the utterance of a single word, when felt from the heart. All this, in the word "amen."

As I look at both of my sons, as I watch them grow and try to figure out the world and their place in it... all I can do is utter a prayer in my heart. For their growth. For their health. For their safety, and happiness. For fulfillment in their quest to find wonder, and delight, and meaning in life. For theirs, and for ours.

Amen. And amen.

1998-07-31T15:38:00.000-07:00

A People of Memory

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

It will be a "what I did on my summer vacation tale" I will probably never forget. Although I would like to. We were in San Diego in late June, for a week of vacation prior to a rabbinic convention in Anaheim. We were getting ready to leave San Diego, and we wanted to go to Tijuana for the day. We checked out of the hotel, and got ready to go to Mexico. We never made it. But we suspect that our rented mini-van might have made it there ahead of us.

As Julie was checking out of the hotel, I went to the hotel's parking lot to retrieve the van. I went to the spot where I knew I had parked it... and it was not there. My immediate thought, of course, was the same feeling that many of us have when standing in a parking lot wondering where on earth we had put our car a couple of hours before. My first instinct... was to question my memory. (My memory was fine, by the way. The van -- and our two car seats -- was indeed gone. Next time I'll think twice about that supplemental insurance they offer.)

Memory is a precious and so fluid thing, for individuals -- and for communities.

Sharing and shaping the stories of our lives, we seek to take the seeds of recollection inside of us, and plant them in a permanent way, to move from story to history. Just as it is important for people to share the stories of themselves with others, so, too, must a community from time to time seek to assure itself about the future by recalling a continuity with the past. To review the journey. To tell the tale. To share the story of yesterday with the community of today.

We Jews have been called a people of memory. We are blessed with a long tale to tell, with a journey that has lasted for almost four thousand years. We are burdened with moments of torture and pain, ennobled by visions of glory, and triumph, and the simple and sublime transmission of our heritage, from generation, to generation, to generation.

And yet, as I stood there in that parking lot in San Diego questioning memory and sanity, I learned another lesson as well. That we are shaped by our memory, but we are not fully defined by it. For there are times when the stories -- and answers -- of the past fail to soothe the soul. There are times when, in panic or consternation, they fail to come to mind. And there are times, as well, when doing things just because that is how they have always been done will not do at all.

Do you remember the story of the pot roast? (What? You don't? But, you must have heard it somewhere!) A mother, in cooking a meal (this story has only women cooking; it is in no way meant to imply that men can't cook), takes one end of a brisket, cuts it off, and throws it out. She does the same thing to the other end. Her daughter asks her what she is doing. Why she is throwing out the two ends of the meat. (If you are a vegetarian, substitute: tofu loaf. No actual animals were harmed in the writing of this column.) The mother replies: "I don't know. That is the way my mother always cooked the meat. You know, let's go ask her." The pair then go to grandma, who says the same exact thing. The three women now go to the great-grandmother, conveniently still alive and able to answer the troubling question.

"Great grandmother," the young girl asks, "why, when you were baking a brisket, did you cut off one end, throw it away, then cut off another end, and throw it away?" "Oh, that," the woman replied. "I remember doing that! It's because I only had a pot so big," and she gestures, making a size smaller than a whole brisket might have been expected to be.

We are, indeed, powerfully shaped by our past, in more ways than we will ever know (except for those of us with the patience, energy and insurance plans to spend multiple years in Freudian-style analysis). But when memory fails, old answers don't work, or something truly new arises, it is the way we adjust, the way we innovate, the way we change that serves as the guarantor of the future.

There is an old, traditional adage that "chadash, asur min haTorah." Anything new, anything innovative, anything not found in the vast data banks of experience of our people's past -- is forbidden by the Torah. But it is an adage of those afraid of change, afraid to stand on that perilous bridge between what was and what may yet come to be.

Memory is one tool which makes us who we are. But there is another. It is called adaptability. And blended, the one with the other, the knowledge of the past and the spontanaity of the moment, the way we react to the new... when the two work together well, that is called growth.

May we all be able to get from here to there in healthy growth... but, also... with all our future rental cars intact.

1998-03-20T15:45:00.000-08:00

The XF11 Files

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

So for 24-hours last week it looked like Chicken Little was right. For 24-hours it seemed a real possibility that the sky might be falling after all.

The object that caused such concern: an obscure white blick on an astronomical photoplate, a mile-long asteroid dubbed 1997 XF11 and listed, now, in cosmological terms as a PHO. A "Potentially Hazardous Object." Even the date of our remotely possible encounter with fate was fixed for all to see: on October 26, 2028, a Thursday, object 1997 XF11 was, for some time last week, thought to perhaps show the hint of a theoretical potential of passing within 30,000 miles of the Earth.

I loved the way the New York Times reported the story. Journalist Malcolm Browne wrote that there was a "very slight possibility" that the asteroid might hit the Earth. In such a scenario, he went on to inform us, such an impact "would not necessarily be enough to wipe out the human race."

Nothing like such measured words to go with breakfast. Hey, I generally don't drink coffee, so this made me wake up. Pour milk, stir in instant perspective! Like the words of an old bumper sticker: "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day!"

By the next day, the scare had died down. New calculations put the hurtling rock 600,000 miles away, a "close but no cigar kind of near miss" that will provide a voyeuristic opportunity for an adrenaline rush without any real danger. Probably. We think. Unless, of course, the astronomers were paid off. By secret agents. To calm us down. To let Ken Starr finish his work. All part of some vast right wing conspiracy. (THIS COLUMN HAS BEEN IMPOUNDED BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT. THERE IS NO ACTUAL CAUSE FOR ALARM. WE REPEAT...)

My friends, for years now, in anticipation of the coming turn of the century, staring at the fact of all those zeroes on a calendar, our Christian colleagues and neighbors worldwide have been in the first throes of a speculative frenzy. Computers may crash, and mass confusion ensue, but many people are trying to look at an even bigger picture. With a change in digits, everyone is analyzing what the old era was about, and what the new time will bring. What it means for humanity. If Elvis -- or others -- will return.

We Jews have been in a bit of a bind about this Year 2000 business. After all, we are part of the general culture. We use the common calendar. We'll have to stop writing 1999 on our checks, just like everyone else. And yet the commotion commemorates a date at best indifferent to us, and at worst one whose theological presuppositions we simply do not share. Any calendar is an artifice, a human creation, but it would still be nice to join in with the crowd, and share this sense of speculation and reflection.

But hey, thanks to an alarmist astronomer, now we can feel fully free to participate. And its not just the turning of a year. It's the end of the world. Even Hindu nationalists will have to reevealuate their plans. It affects everyone. It unites us all. Ok, so the date causing us to look inward is 2028, not 2000. But what's a quarter century between friends?

And so, with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance, we turn inward, and ask the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What have we accomplished in human history? If we had only a few years left, what would we do with the time? If it all went away in a big boom tomorrow, would the roaches outlast us all?

And the inevitable question: can we make it go away? As a brief discussion flared up about nuclear tipped missles to drive the asteroid off course, I was reminded of the old joke in which God decided to tell Richard Nixon that the world would be flooded in three days. The president told the American people that they had three days to do whatever they wanted, to loot, to plunder, to watch I Love Lucy reruns. Then, because of detente, Nixon decided to pick up the hotline and call Brezhnev. Brezhnev told the Russians that they had three days to perfect Communism. And, because of our special relationship with Israel, Nixon also phoned Golda. She went before the Israeli public and said: look, folks. "You've got three days to learn how to swim." We are experts on survival, we Jews. Maybe we have something to say... even about asteroids.

But to dwell for the moment on the inner search, and not the quick fix. The approach of an asteroid for a population, or a reminder of mortality for an individual, does the same thing. It makes us look at our lives, and our labors. It makes us wonder about the worth of our work. It makes us, perhaps, sort out our priorities, and concentrate on what is truly important in our lives. The friends that we make. The families we build. The projects that count. The people we help. The things we do to make the world a better place in the time on Earth we have.

As we complete the reading of the book of Exodus, we read of another type of completion. It is the story of the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, precursor to the Temple in Jerusalem, focal point of the sacred enterprise which engaged our people in the aftermath of Sinai. We read: "And when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks -- as the Eternal had commanded, so they had done -- Moses blessed them."

In the early part of this century, the philosopher Martin Buber discovered the many ways in which the story of the completion of the Tabernacle in the wilderness echoes the story of the creation of the world. The same words are used, the same verbal roots. God -- and later the people -- are said to have '"made" or "fashioned" their handiwork, to "see" and "behold" it, to "finish" and "complete" it, and, finally, to "bless" it. The same roots, the same words, the same order. Somehow, there is a connection being made, between the construction of the Tabernacle and the creation of the world.

Somehow, indeed, there is a connection between the work of the world, and the way of the world. Between what we do, and something beyond ourselves. For when we are doing God's work, when we are doing what God wants us to do, we are, indeed, completing God's world. However long it takes. And however long we have.

When I was young, I remember reading a book, and then seeing the movie, about what would happen if another planet smashed into ours. It was called When Worlds Collide. In the opening scene, an airplane pilot who had brought one scientist to meet another, who had accidentily overheard the newly discovered discussion of impending doom, is seen in a restaurant lighting $100 bills on fire and using them to light a cigar.

We are all given a finite time on this earth. But rather than burning bills, we must burn with the flame of faith, with the fire of conviction, with the energy of sacred tasks and holy work.

We read in Pirkei Avot: "lo alecha hamelacha ligmor; it is not incumbent upon you to finish the work. V'lo atta ben horin l'hivatel mimenu. But neither are you free to desist from it." However long it takes. And however long we have.

1998-03-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

A Downtown Meeting

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

So I was running late for my meeting. I had left the Temple late, the building I was looking for wasn't where I expected it to be, the parking sign was small and I missed it on my first pass by. Still, I was on my way to a meeting I had sought, and I was looking forward to it. I was going to meet the (Catholic) Bishop, and I was confident that "the Cause" (Catholic-Jewish dialog, mutual understanding, world peace and harmony, simple human justice, you name it) would be advanced by our encounter.

In any event, that had been my experience in the past. The dialog between the (two) rabbis of Erie, Pennsylvania, where I lived until last summer, with the region's Christian Bishops (Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist) had been very productive; regular meetings led to study sessions, crisis management, the building of bridges, and, on occasion, the ability to speak in a single voice as a solidly unified community of faith. I had been a proud participant in these discussions, and I believed in them.

In addition, I serve on the Reform movement's national Committee on Interreligious Affairs. I am interested in the interchange between communities of faith in this country at a national level. I believe that we are blessed to be living in a unique period of history, and a place in the world, when and where the doors of understanding and, even more simply, the opportunity for encounter with one another, exist on a scale unprecedented in all of human history. Why, just a generation ago a Catholic was not allowed to enter into a Protestant church, much less a synagogue, nor would Jews ever think of visiting a Christian service. (A concert in a church, perhaps, or the obligatory art tour of the cathedrals of Europe. But a spiritual encounter in a place that evoked images of persecution? Never! Well, hardly ever.)

And so, with local concerns and national credentials well rehearsed, I was ready for my meeting. Or so I thought.

It was a bitterly cold day. The worst of an otherwise deceptively mild winter. As I came near the entrance to the Catholic center, a young looking African American woman approached me. I could tell what was coming. She was going to ask me for money.

I was right. I haven't been asked for money on the street that much in the suburbs of late. I used to carry a separate coin purse in Manhatten, however, so I could respond to the mitzvah of tzedakah -- but also not feel a need to take my full wallet out. It was cold. She looked miserable. I took out my wallet. I gave her two dollars.

She asked for twenty. She said she was a grandmother. I gave her another single. She asked for ten, then five. God would bless me, she assured me, if only I gave her more. I told her that was all I could do. At the same time I wondered at bit.. at her theological chutzpah. Here I was, a religious leader, on my way to see another religious leader... and she was telling me whom God would bless? I wished her well, and good luck. I entered the building. And I went upstairs to my meeting.

The meeting was fine. I enjoyed it. The Bishop was warm, personable, interested... and very bright. He knew from Jews; he had a great deal of experience with Interfaith dialog throughout his career. But this is Buffalo, not Erie. It is a bigger pond. I cannot claim to represent the whole community. So here I was, the rabbi of a single synagogue, meeting with a man in charge of an entire region. I am not sure what tangible results came out of our meeting, although I am glad that I went.

I had sort of skipped lunch. I had meetings straight through the usual dinner hour. I left the downtown building, and grabbed something to eat in the mid-afternoon. The waitress was particularly nice, so I reached into my wallet to give her an additional dollar. An additional dollar. For bringing me water with a smile on her face.

And all of a sudden it hit me as if the glass of water was thrown in my face. I was so willing to part with my money, for some things. And so grudging about others. (And yes, I know the Maimonides passage, about the lowest level of tzedakah being that which is given grudgingly, or less than what one is asked to do.) So willing when it seems like my choice. So unwilling when it was someone else's.

And more. I had a meeting downtown the other day. Perhaps I wasn't late, and I wasn't early. Perhaps the meeting downtown took place exactly when it was supposed to occur. Perhaps the reason I went downtown was not to meet with a religious leader at all. Perhaps the reason I went downtown was to have a chance encounter with a woman whose name I will never know. Who had a need in her life -- and a lesson to teach. At the bottom of the building. In the harsh chill of the coldest day of the year.

I came face to face with my arrogance the other day. Not for the amount I gave. But for the self-importance in my own heart. The next time someone looks me in the eye with need... may I respond to the whole person, and with my whole being. For real meetings are not always planned. And true encounters happen, not when we have them in our schedules, but in their own time. All the time.

1998-03-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

Shots Heard 'Round the World:

Basketball and Judaism

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am

Williamsville, New York

Despite being traumatized and affected for years to come by the departure of my home town team as a tender youth, and, indeed, despite my unswerving attachment to the real America's team in a completely different sport (that's the Washington Redskins, folks, for anyone under the mistaken impression that Dallas has anything to do with the rest of the country), I had always thought that it was baseball that provided the best material for sermons and other spiritual commentary. After all, in baseball, almost unique among sports, that the game is truly not over until it is over. The valuable lesson of never giving up simply does not apply to a 66-3 football blowout entering the fourth quarter. Start the car, avoid the crowd, switch to Star Trek on another station. Stick a fork in your team, they're done. But in baseball, until the last out is called, no matter the deficit, there is always hope. And it is in baseball that teaches, as a former commissioner of the game once said, that one in three is greatness. And that errors are part of the game.

Never giving up. Not succeding each and every attempt. Accepting imperfection. These are amongst the most powerful spiritual lessons any sport -- or any sermon -- can hope to teach. They are lessons that come from baseball.

But move over, America's national pasttime. For this past month, lessons are coming fast and furious from another field. No, not Japan. From the court of play to the court of law, to the court of public opinion. This month the lessons come from that monotonous dribble of sameness, that track meet masked as competition: basketball.

Item: University of Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma arranges for his star player, Nykesha Sales, injured the previous week and supposedly out for the season despite being a single point shy of breaking her school's single season scoring record, to take an uncontested shot, a staged basket, at the start of her team's last regular season game. She made the shot. She broke the record. Or did she?

Item: A thug disguised as a professional basketball player, one Latrell Sprewell, assaults his coach, chokes him, and returns after one physical encounter to initiate another and, reportedly, threaten to kill the man as well. His team terminates his contract and the league suspends the player from the league for an entire year. It does not press criminal charges. But Sprewell, apparantly unmollified by the fact that he was not facing jail time, challenges the suspension. An arbitrator supports the challenge, orders Sprewell's suspension shortened, and most of his back pay reinstated. Score: National Basketball Player's Association: 1, Human Decency, Responsibility and Accountability: 0.

I am truly torn by the first incident. My initial reaction was that I didn't have an immediate opinion on the subject. (Those who know me know how rare that is.) Or, rather, I had two opinions. It was kind, it was compassionate, it was a human moment in the midst of cutthroat competition. It was ridiculous and inappropriate, it makes records meaningless, it can't really count.

The second incident is more serious. Such behavior off a court really would land one in jail or, for a first offense, at least facing criminal charges. Overturning the league's ruling makes a laughing stock of discipline, and sends a message that violence is tolerated if you have enough talent to consistently place a rubber object inside a metal circle. As NBA Commissioner David Stern said, "the answer is now well established: you cannot choke your boss and hold your job unless you play in the NBA..."

But these two basketball-related incidents have something in common with each other. A sport is an invention, a game, with rules and expectations and, when you enter into its world, a suspension of disbelief, an embrace of the generally accepted parameters that define its borders. The Sales and Sprewell incidents, in different ways and for different reasons, nonetheless both break that suspension of disbelief. They both invade the border of a world, they both cross lines between the world of a game and what we think of as the "real" world. Injuries are part of the game, a factor for individual players and for coaches weighing the balance and depth of their team; they cannot be wished away. Deliberate violence, on the other hand, is not part of the game. It cannot be condoned, tolerated or excused. With Sales and Sprewell, "inside" and "outside," "game" and "world," "constructed reality A," and, if we are honest with ourselves, "constructed reality B" that we think of as the everyday world collide. And when worlds collide, we need to "'Nupe it." But it's not just our joints that ache.

So what does this have to do with religion? Why is a rabbi writing about sports? It's because I know what that headache is like, when worlds collide. As Jews in a modern world, we know all about the crashing together of inside and outside, the dissonant overlap between Reality One and Reality Two. Reconstructionist Jews phrase it differently, but mean the same thing: they know that we stand at a crash-prone intersection on the highway of two civilizations.

You see, I believe that religions are, like sports, constructed realities. I believe that all religions, including the one to which I adhere and to which I have pledged my soul, my sweat, and my career, are artificial inventions of human beings. Inspired by a reality, an impulse, a holy voice beyond ourselves, yes; but the details, the parameters, the specific rules, the particular pathways to Eternity... the material may be ordered from above, we have to pave the paths ourselves. All religions, including Judaism, are meaning, systems made with our minds and shaped by human hands. They are, in this way, like entering into a game. There are rules. There are expectations. And there is a moment when we enter into another world, with its own borders, its own realities. We train, we study, we learn about the world. But to enter it fully there is a moment when the training becomes merely prelude, when it has brought us so far but can go no further, when we must take the next step ourselves. To enter into a world with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. It takes a leap of faith. A leap towards heaven. A jump shot sent towards the sky.. on the wings of a prayer.

Inside. And outside. And sometimes I wonder if all of the conflicts and controversy going on in the Jewish world at the moment have to do with different ideas about where the borders are. About what is on the inside, and what is on the outside. Or who.

To play a game you have to, as the saying goes, "play by the rules." To live in, to experience a religious tradition you have to immerse yourself in the assumptions and claims of another world. To say that one day a week is different from others, it is not just Friday night, but Erev Shabbat. To say that one place is different from other places, it is a Promised Land, a sacred part of a people's story. To see a pair of candles or a six pointed star or tasteless flat bread or "backwards" black letters on an unrolled scroll and feel a part of the picture, a connection with the props, a string pulled in your own heart. It is your uniform. Your field. Your home team.

And the tensions on the team? One player says it counts for more if you throw the ball from here. Another says it doesn't. One player says that one line is out of bounds. Another says the field should be repainted, to extend the boundaries, to include new places, to include new people. One player says the coach has to approve you to be on the team. Another says that anyone who wants to wear your uniform can come and take a shot.

Conversion. Intermarriage. Outreach and Inclusion. Acceptance of each other. Recognition of rabbis. The role of women. Changing tradition. The length of holidays. Peace with others. Peace amongst ourselves. All these things are disagreements about rules, about boundaries, about how to play a game or form a team. About whose shots count, and who hits coaches. About the assumptions we should share to make a world work.

It is not just a game. It is life. The essence of community, of a people, of a faith is that we share a certain number of assumptions about the universe, that we look at the world, to some critical degree, in the same way. When we don't share some necessary level of commonality, we aren't part of the same team anymore. We can't be.

Am Echad, we Jews call ourselves. "One People." But are we? Only to the degree we are moving in the same direction, sharing the same goals, working towards the same ends. Only when we are able to function... as players on a field, and members of a team.

Maybe, on some issues, the different denominations of Judaism see things so differently that we are not all on the same team. If that is the case, then perhaps we can at least try to remember that we can, I hope, agree on enough, to be in the same league. And to play the same game.

1997-12-23T15:11:00.000-08:00

It's Okay To Be Different!

Ancient Message of Chanukah still relevant today

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach,

Temple Beth Am,

Williamsville, New York

It is perhaps an accident of time that the eight-day festival of Chanukah and Christmas, fall so close together. They even sometimes coincide. (But only sometimes. Chanukah, based on the Hebrew calendar, not the Gregorian one, can fall as early as the end of November or as late as the beginning of January.) It is perhaps an accident. But it is, at one and the same time, both unfortunate and fortuitous that these quite different holidays come so close together.

It is unfortunate only in that many people assume that Chanukah is "the Jewish Christmas." In fact, Chanukah (the older celebration by nearly two centuries) is one of the minor holidays of the Jewish year, and has been elevated in importance only on the basis of its close proximity to a time when so many others are celebrating, and when the American economy goes into a frenzied overdrive.

It is also unfortunate since, because the two holidays fall so close together, some people simply assume that they have the same message, that of universal peace and love.

Universal peace and love, reconciliation between human beings and the divine, these are, of course, among the most important themes of human life. As such, this message is an important part of Jewish life. But it is not this holiday, or this season that celebrates these themes for Jews. In fact, the celebration of Chanukah has a very different story to tell.

Once upon a time (well, it was 165 B.C.E. to be exact), in a place far away (well, Israel -- and with airplanes you can get there quicker than you could with camels) there was a people, the Jews, who were ruled over by another people, the Seleucid Empire, the Syrian part of the remnants of what was once Alexander the Great's territory. The Syrian-Greeks wanted everyone to be the same. They were used to the fact that in every land they conquered, people began to imitate them. The conquered peoples took on the clothing of their rulers, and their customs, and their cuisine, and their culture. And their gods.

Every people they conquered emulated them. In every land their ways held sway. In every land, that is, except one. In ancient Israelites, the world's first and at that time still only monotheists, could not simply take on Greek culture completely. Because to do so meant to take on the Greek gods. And that was impossible for a monotheist to do.

While Israel was at peace, and gave the Syrian Greeks no trouble, these conquered people were perhaps a curiosity, but they were of no greater concern than that. They could be tolerated. They could be indulged. But when there was trouble in the land, when there was internal tension between those Jews who wanted to imitate the Greeks to some degree (although not to the point of taking on the pantheon of polytheism) and those who did not, when the people became difficult to rule, the limited "tolerance" of the Syrian-Greeks evaporated. Not understanding monotheism at all, not understanding why there were not willingly placed statues to the ruling gods, the Seleucids, under King Antiochus Epiphanes IV, simply banned Judaism. They made the practice of the religion illegal -- punishable by death.

The details of the Maccabean revolt are somewhat well known -- how a small band of Jewish resistance fighters, knowing the land well and (tradition says) graced by God, managed to overthrow the mighty empire, to recapture and cleanse the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, to rekindle the Eternal Light which the enemy had extinguish with the scant single sack of purified oil that remained -- only to witness the flame lasting for eight full days, until the time when new oil could be made.

The details are well known, perhaps... but it is the motive behind the details that makes the timing of Chanukah so fortuitous. For what motivated the Maccabees, the Jews who revolted against the Syrian oppression, was a fight for survival, yes. But it was not a war of conquest. It was not a war to end all large empires, or turn a minority into a majority. In the midst of an overwhelmingly gentile world, against oppressors who wanted to make everyone the same, the fight of the Maccabees was just as much about the right to be different.

The right to be different. The right to be a minority. To survive, to even thrive, as a minority, who share many but not all of the values of the surrounding culture. It was the message of Chanukah centuries ago. And, for Jews, it is the opportunity in the celebration of Chanukah to this very day.

In one sense, it is precisely because Chanukah falls so near to Christmas, that in celebrating Chanukah Jews are reminded, especially in this part of the country, of what it is like to be different. The continued celebration of the holiday as a minority thus contains the fulfillment of its own message. At this season, in days gone by, Jews fought hard for the right to be different. To celebrate this Jewish holiday still, even while wishing Christian neighbors well in their different and much more visible celebration of this season, is to remember the ancient fight, and relive its message anew.

Jews and Christians celebrate at about the same time at this season, and thus share a spirit of celebration. But we do not share the specific holidays of our tradition, and the message is not the same. But that should not be a problem. Because it is okay to be different.