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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

    

Dr. Spock, Mr. Spock and You

Dr. Spock, Mr. Spock and You

Rabbi Michael Feshbach

Temple Beth Am
Williamsville, New York

Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Pshishke told his disciples: Everyone must have two pockets, with a note in each pocket, so that he or she can reach into the one or the other, depending on the need.  When feeling high and mighty one should reach into the left pocket, and find the words: ani eifer v'afar; I am but dust and ashes. But when feeling lowly and depressed, discouraged or disconsolate, one should reach into the right pocket, and, there, find the words: 'Bishvili nivra ha'olam. For my sake was the world created.'

I am not a big fan of the comic strip B.C. I'm actually not alone in this fueling. In fact, last year, a congregant called me to discuss borderline anti-Semitic overtones in one particular strip. I agreed, but wasn’t sure what to do about it. In addition, any time I see the comic strip, I am always tempted to take a pen and add a single letter after the title, changing it from the overtly Christian B.C. into the more neutral B.C.E. that Jews use in referring to ancient dates.

Still, B.C. does make me laugh from time to time. In particular, I remember one thread from years ago, an absurdly delightful interplay between one of the characters and all clams, everywhere. 1his character, it seems, suspected that clams had legs. One day, he was proven correct! He witnessed a clam walking. He shouted his discovery to the world: 'Clams got legs!' Of course, by the time anyone else came over to see, said clam was back on the ground, showing no evidence at all of its additional appendages. There was the man, stuck knowing that something was true, yet consistently: frustrated in his attempts to prove it.

Now, I'm going to make a bit of a leap here, but I have always imagined that this is how the scientists who study particle physics must fuel all the time. They suspect something, they even see something once, but then cannot duplicate the result, or prove it in a journal for the tiniest building blocks of matter are mysterious indeed. Sometimes particles reveal their character only in isolation other properties are brought out only in interaction with other particles, and only under certain conditions high speed; great heat; or under tremendous stress and pressure.

One of the most elusive particles of all is called the neutrino. For years, the neutrino was predicted by mathematical models and cosmological theories, but never seen in nature. No wonder. A neutrino can pass clear through a block of lead a light year thick and not interact with anything along the way. Neutrinos are produced by the nuclear reactions that take place inside an active star. 1heyare supposedly abundant, but the only way, so fur, that anyone has ever found to detect one on this planet is by having an isolated pool of water buried deep underground, where, from time to time, but very rarely, a single neutrino will collide with another particle, and reveal itself  Neutrinos have indeed been detected now. But until very, very recently, they were thought to weigh exactly nothing.

Then, this past May, further experiments revealed that the neutrino does, indeed, have a barely measurable mass. Now, having barely passed college physics, having given up my second dream in life -- to be an astronomer -­ nevertheless I immediately came up with my own theory. That perhaps this minuscule neutrino will answer the mystery of the missing mass of the universe, the: frustrating fact that the universe seems to weigh 90% less than scientists say it should. Perhaps this lowly particle will prove to be the most powerful force of all

Therein, of course, lies a lesson call it cosmological karma or the insight that everything matters. For if everything matters, if everything has an effect on everything else, if even the humble neutrino can have such an impact on the universe, think of what can be done ... by you, or by me.  Each one of us matters to the world we can't always prove it. We can't always convince each other. But we sense it, we feel it, we know it to be true.

In my last column, I wrote about accepting ourselves as we are, including our flaws. But there is a danger in that message, that we will confuse explanation with excuse, that we will say 'look, I know I caused pain, but that's just the way I am I can't help myself the devil made me do it.' Or, more Jewishly phrased: 'my yetzer hara'ah, my evil inclination’ Acceptance of ourselves as we are does not imply acceptance of acts that are evil or wrong.

And it does not mean that we are powerless in the race of our flaws or in the face of the world. Flawed, broken, shattered and cracked we may be.  But we are all there is of us. Sometimes a broken rod is the only rod, a bloody band the only one, an aching heart the only heart to do the good that must be done.  A self-absorbed in it's own weakness can still be awakened by the needs of others.  We have it inside us to have an impact to make a difference to change the world in spotlights or in shadows in large ways or small over the course of a lifetime and every single day.

To change the world, all it takes is three steps to act to not freeze from fear and to believe in ourselves.

Act now. You can make a difference. Rabbi Hillel, hu haya omer: Im ein ani li, mi li? U'ch'she'ani l'atzmi, ma ani? V'im lo achshov, eimatai. Rabbi Hillel used to say: If l am not for myself; who will be for me. But if l am only for myself: what am I? And if not now, when?

Sometimes I miss the 1960's. Now, I know there were plenty of problems with what one nation went through during that decade. A woman a little older than my mother once told me that she thought all the plagues of contemporary American life can be traced to that demented period of time in general and to one Dr. Spock in particular, who, she said, destroyed traditional values, taught selfishness and turned the concept of responsibility inside out. So, I know there were problems. And I am not endorsing drugs in any way, shape or form but, to be honest, I was actually... too young during that decade to experience its darker underside. What I remember, romanticized through the mist of time, is only this: the palpable reeling of power of involvement. The sense of being part of something larger than ourselves, yet which depended on each person present.

Later, when I was in high school involved in my Temple youth group, the message came through again. I remember the motto of NFTY, the National Federation of Temple Youth, during the 1970's. A value and a promise all in one: 'You can make a difference.'

One dignified, determined... and ordinary woman... sitting in the front of a bus An ordinary worker in a ship building plant, racing down a nation of oppressors in Poland A man who kept his hopes alive through decades in prison, now president of his nation. What is the difference, what is the gap, between celebrities and ramous people, between a Rosa Parks or Lech Walensa 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 llllfeai 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, you tire; your time may come with no warning at all

Indeed, whatever the scale, whatever the scope, we make a difference, in everything we do.

Passing neighbor, on seeing a friend working a vegetable garden in the back of his field: "You should thank God/or giving you such a good field." The friend, in response: "Yes, but you should have seen what it looked like when just God had it!"

The first step is just to act the second, to not be afraid.

Don't freeze from fear of what might be. No one can know all the consequences of any action. Rabbi Tar/on, hu haya omeir: Lo Alecha ham'lecha ligmor. V'lo atta ben chorin l'hivateil mimena; Rabbi Tarfon used to say: You are not required to complete the work. But neither are you free to abstain from it

It would be wonderful to know, before we did anything, what all the implications and ramifications of our action would be. All the possible futures from acting, or not acting But only God can have such knowledge.

We God, and maybe one other. Earlier I referred to Dr. Spock.  I now am, as I often do, to Mr. Spock for inspiration. (Someday I am going to write a book about teaching Jewish values through Star Trek.) There was that episode in which Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy go back in time, to the 1930's. Kirk falls in love with a woman played by Joan Collins, and Spock builds some machine in the basement that sees two possible futures for Kirk's girlfriend.

Either she will be killed while crossing the street sometime in the next week -- or she will go on to found a wide-spread peace movement and delay American entry into the war, thereby allowing Germany to build the bomb: first. In that: future, the Nazi's would have won the war, and this century of terror would have been even worse than it already was. All because one woman did not get hit by a car. Which, of course, without the convenient but excruciatingly uncomfortable foreknowledge only possible in fiction, any one of us would have tried to prevent? Maybe it wouldn't be so great to know everything in advance, after all.

But we do not have Spock's machine. All we know is that we must do what we think is best in our lives. We must act, without having all the facts. We must act on faith, faith in the: future, and faith in ourselves, that when we try to do something, we are acting to make this world a better place.

Ultimately, to do anything at all, we must believe in ourselves. Rabi omeir: al tistakeil bakankan, eleh  b'mah sheyeish bo.  Rabbi said: do not look at the flask, but, rather, at what it contains.  Despite the flaws I spoke about last night, we can transcend the limits of our ordinary vision. We have much more power, we can do for more than we usually assure.

A story, perhaps a myth. A Christian monastery fell on rough times, and people were leaving. No one is joining.  They decide to call in a rabbi as a consultant.  The rabbi sits with the abbot, and they study Bible together. The abbot tells the rabbi of his problems, and the rabbi says: "I don’t know how to solve your problems, but this I do know. One of you is the messiah."

The abbot is absolutely flabbergasted.   He calls together everyone, and he tells his people that one of them is the Messiah.  They can't believe it. But then all of a sudden they start wondering. Is it Brother Philip?  Nah, it couldn't be.  But then again, maybe it is.  It couldn't be Brother Eldridge -- but, then again, you never know.  And they start treating each other with dignity and with love and with a sense of searching piety.   From time to time people  would come to visit the monastery, and to enjoy the beautiful view that it afforded of the hills and valleys.  And sometimes they would talk with the monks. One by one, people started to join the monastery, and it was all because people there believed that one of them might be the Messiah.

Each one of us is like the stars in the sky... or the very smallest bits of stuff we study. Sometimes, we reveal ourselves, our nature, in isolation. In what we do when we are alone. More often, we learn about who we are when we fuel the pull of other people. In interaction with others. But under the scrutiny of a microscope or in the full light of day, alone or together, no matter which, every move we make, eve1y step we take... affects everything, everywhere. It is more than we can grasp. But, to borrow a phrase, we just do it. We can make ourselves matter.  We can make our lives count. We can mend the broken universe, and make it whole again.

Once more, from youth group, the words of Arik Einstein, a popular Israeli singer: 'Ani v 'atta, nishaneh et ha'olam; you and I can change the world.'