Thursday, March 28, 2013

Drash for SHabbat Chol Hamo'ed Pesach


It’s Still Not about Me
Rabbi Don Levy

In case you hadn’t yet figured it out, I’m a big fan of Pesach.  It’s my favourite Jewish festival of the year.  Oh, they’re all wonderful occasions…but Pesach just resonates with me deeper than any of the others.  I take delight in sharing Seder with you, with any other Jews, and with any gentiles as well.  I like the relaxed nature of the setting.  Of being seated at a table with friends and family.  It is to me far more affective than having you sit in the temple sanctuary to observe an elaborate service.  I use the verb ‘observe’ deliberately.  For those who are not directly involved in the ritual at any given time, it is at least likely that they are only observing.  But in the Passover Seder, because it is more participatory and interactive, the door is open to imbibe some of Pesach’s most profound messages.
                This, notwithstanding what I said from this pulpit last Shabbat.  That I fear that for some of us, the message is lost in the details.  That’s a universal pitfall.  As I pointed out last week, it is easy, to allow oneself to get lost in the details.  Easier, and often less painful, than to absorb the true messages of Pesach and contemplate them.  And the fact that the ‘performance’ of the Seder takes some time, often discourages us from really thinking about the messages in the Haggadah text while it’s happening.
                For that reason, thank God we have this Shabbat, Shabbat Chol Hamo’ed Pesach.  Here, the Torah reading presents some of the text of the Haggadah for us to hear in a different kind of atmosphere.  Because we do need to hear it, and contemplate it, without those Four Questions echoing in our heads.  You know the Four Burning Questions, of which I speak:  When do we eat?  When do we eat?  When do we eat?  And finally:  When do we eat?
                 So today, we can really think about Exodus 13:8:  You shall tell your child on that day; it is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free from Egypt.
                Remember the response given to the Rasha, the evil child, in the Haggadah?  It is this verse, with emphasis on me and I:  It is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free from Egypt.  We read it that way, with that emphasis, for a reason.  It is because the difference between a good person and an evil person – at least in this example – is being able to personally identify with events for which one was not physically present.  This, in contrast to thinking that it has no connection to oneself.  Because the one who can’t see that connection, cannot see himself as a player in the ever-unfolding saga of the Jewish people.  To him, all this Seder pomp is just a fixation on some events in the ancient past.  Events which might or might not have actually happened.  But in any case, it has nothing to do with him, to his ‘me.’
                Really, this is the most important lesson of Jewish life – not just the Seder.  It’s not about me, it’s about the People Israel.  Say you skip coming to shul on a Friday night or a Saturday morning, or both, for whatever reason.  You’re tired.  You want to watch American Idol.  It’s too nice a day outside and you want to go sailing.  Now I can make the case that it will benefit you to attend the service and observe Shabbat.  But the real loss if you do not come is to the community as a whole.  The more Jews who show up, the more affirmation each one of us feels in coming.  The more intellectual exchange about the day’s message or anything else that’s on people’s minds.  The more we feel our prayers are real because we hear the collective voices rising heavenward.
                I can hear the protests forming in some of your heads.  Oh, no…the Rabbi is on the ‘it’s not about me’ soapbox again.  Guilty.  Because it’s still not about me.  Or you, singular.  It’s about us.  And it will always be.  Pesach is one more special occasion of the year to hear this message and take it to heart.
                I can’t over-emphasise this point.  At some point in the game, at some time, what I want has to be suborned to what is good for the community.  What I think is the right answer, if the majority of members of the community don’t agree, is not going to carry the day.  Except in matters of ethical behaviour, the course of the community needs to be decided by the thrust of what the community considers to be its norms.  That is, with reference to what our Tradition teaches and what is required by the law of the land.
                It is my prayer that this community will recognise this principle.  It is my prayer that this community will operate according to this principle.  We’re not there yet.  Until we do get there, forgive me for pounding very simple messages – such as this one – again and again.  Until we master the basics, there’s no point in talking about advanced concepts.  That’s why the Rabbis ruled that nobody who had not mastered basic Torah should delve in Kabbalah or any other mysticism.  One needs to be grounded in the basics before taking off on flights of fancy.  In high school, you didn’t tackle physics until you had first mastered biology and chemistry.  You didn’t try your hand at trigonometry until you had mastered algebra.  A professional driver does not try his hand at guiding one of those ‘road trains’ through the outback until he can safely drive a single tractor-trailer.  It’s all just plain common sense.
                It’s simple in theory but difficult to put into effect.  It’s not about me.  But our community celebrations and observances, including the Passover Seder, provide us with constant reinforcement of this principle.  May we learn to see, and appreciate the forest.  May we learn, and live according to, this important principle.  Shabbat shalom, and Mo’adim Lesimcha

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Drash for Shabbat Hagaddol


Let’s Take a Journey Together

Pesach is one of the most important occasions of the year to most Jews.  As well it should be.  Because no annual observance reflects what we have come to view as the spirit of Judaism more than the journey that our ancestors took at Pesach.  I’m sure that you’ve heard the cliché that Life is Journey – you’ve heard it from my mouth, but you’re also aware that it isn’t original to me.  Speaking of life metaphorically as a journey from point to point is a popular illustration – a popular way to understand the emotional and intellectual processes that our lives force us through.  But with our distant ancestors, the generation of Israelites that went out of Egypt – there was nothing metaphorical about the journey.
Because the Pesach ritual is rich and complex, it forces us to take – as it were – a complex journey to realise its important lessons.  But the truth is, most of us will not take that journey.  The minutiae of the ritual can get in the way of our seeing exactly what those lessons are.  It’s like another common cliché – we have a tendency not to see the forest for the trees.  In other words, the complexity and overwhelming fullness of the minutiae of observance, can hamper our overall view of the lessons that Pesach would have us learn.       And that’s why we have Shabbat Hagadol, the Great Shabbat, this Sabbath preceding Pesach.  It serves as an opportunity for me to share with you something of the meaning of the festival, to bring it meaning beyond just the need to comply with all its complex procedures.
You’ve heard me speak before about the ‘danger’ of getting so caught in the minutiae of observances that their deeper meanings escape us.  Some of us like the escape of minutiae.  If you’ve ever been in counselling, you probably went through at least a phase where you resisted taking to heart the counsellor’s, er, counsel.  It is sometimes, really always, uncomfortable to be told that you need to change.  So we focus on that which is not so uncomfortable.  Life in Judaism sometimes requires self-examination, and that self-examination can be uncomfortable.  When made uncomfortable in this way, sometimes we busy ourselves in the details of observance as a way of avoiding it.  So with Pesach, we focus on the details of the Seder.  The shape of the table.  The place settings.  How we’re going to prepare the gefilte fish.  Who’s bringing the various items that are all ‘required’ parts of the meal or the Seder plate.  Which Haggadah will be used.  How long the service will take.  Et cetera…et cetera.
The truth is that all these things don’t make much difference in how we internalise the lessons of Pesach.  They serve as a way of avoiding the pain that the self-examination, if we’re doing it right, may very well bring.  It is far less difficult to produce a picture-perfect Seder, than to really be moved by the lessons of the festival.
But there is one ritual associated with Pesach that, if we do it assiduously, will likely not serve to hide from us the truth of what Pesach’s journey of self-discovery is supposed to bring.  And it is, sadly, a ritual that I daresay most in this room today will not have performed by Monday afternoon.  The ritual is the search for, and burning of, chametz, leaven, in our homes.
Most of you won’t perform bedikat chametz and biyur chametz, for a variety of reasons.  The traditional believer does it, because he takes quite seriously the Torah’s dicta.  And the Torah tells us to remove all chametz from our homes (Exodus 12:15); not to possess any chametz within our private domains (Exodus 12:19, Deuteronomy 16:4); and not to eat of any chametz (Exodus 12:20 and 13:3; Deuteronomy16:3).  If the Torah instructs thusly, and if it is stated in so many places, and you accept the premise, then God does care.  But most progressives do not accept the notion a deity who cares about such things.
There’s another reason, beyond not seeing a Divine imperative, that it isn’t widely done in our congregation.  It is after all a private ritual; you don’t do it in front of your Seder guests.  You do it 24 hours before Seder night.  This, after a thorough cleaning of the house in the days leading up to that moment.  In our circles, Jews tend to avoid individual, private rituals.  Somehow they make us uncomfortable.  Why this is so, is perhaps another topic for another day.  
Many of us do accomplish the house-cleaning part, if not the search for, and burning of, chametz.  We either clean house ourselves, or hire someone to do it for us.  We point to the ritual of getting the house spic-and-span as an important part, as the essence of Pesach.  I’ve even heard Jews assert that it was this cleaning of the house, combined with certain other Jewish rituals, that caused Jews to not be affected as much as their Christian neighbours during the Black Death that swept Europe in the 14th century.  Now it may very well be that certain Jewish purity rituals did lessen the scourge of the Black Death for Jews compared to their neighbours.  But to assert that this was the purpose of these rituals is to miss the point.  In the case of the search for and burning of chametz, its deeper purpose is to teach us…humility.  And let’s be honest about it; of all the things we Jews are known for…well, humility isn’t one of them.  But the search for, and destroying of chametz in our homes, is calculated precisely to make us humble.  Let me explain.
To the Rabbis the whole point of ‘giving up’ chametz for the seven – or eight – days of Pesach is to get our egos in check.  What is chametz, after all?  It is something made of grain that has been allowed to get ‘puffed up’ in the process of turning it into food.  Instead of our eating, and possessing, all manner of thus ‘puffed up’ foods, our consumption of grains is limited to matzo – the poor bread of affliction.  If you eat enough of it, you’ll know exactly what is meant by ‘bread of affliction’…because it is dry and tasteless and unappetizing.  Really, there’s no way around it!  It’s a terrible substitute for all the breads, and pastries, and pastas that we normally eat.  Unless, of course, we’re on the Atkins Diet.
Similarly, over time, our egos become ‘puffed up.’  We exaggerate, in our own minds, our own importance.  We take ourselves far too seriously.  We construct elaborate worlds, of which we are in the centre.  Where everything is me, myself, and I…where everything revolves around me.    Look, people…this is a natural part of the human condition.  It is not a crime.  But it does keep us from benefitting from Pesach in the sense of preparing us for Shavuot – for receiving the Torah.  If we do not learn to be humble, at least sometimes, we cannot accept the Torah.  And if the Torah is going to be a living tradition, if it’s going to live in each one of our hearts, then we must sometimes learn to put our egos in check.  The search for, and purging of chametz teaches us that.
Because it’s not just a matter of changing our diet for a week.  Any of us can do that.  I have a personal ritual of eating pizza with friends right after sunset on the day Pesach ends.  I mean, how much more chametz-y can you get, than pizza?  But when I do eat it on that night, it’s seldom with a sense of desperation.  It’s nice to have, but I never feel terribly deprived for not eating it for a week.
But bedikat chametz, and biyur chametz, if you do it, will bring your ego down to size.  Because it’s plain hard to get rid of all the chametz in the house.  Just when you think you’ve got it all, you’ll find some crumbs in a corner, or underneath a couch cushion.  Those little crumbs just don’t seem to want to get out of your life.
It’s like the excess emotional baggage that we all carry around.  All the quarrels and all the offence we’ve taken, all the sense of grievance and aggrieve-ment.  It’s not easy to purge from our lives.  But we must, if we are going to achieve happiness.  If we’re going to be whole.  If we’re going to clear the decks for Torah.  We simply must get rid of it all at some point.  But just like the little crumbs of chametz that stubbornly remain in our houses and make us work so hard to get rid of them, the excess baggage resulting from our unchecked egos weighs us down.
This is not a complaint against you if you’re not a bedikat chametz-kind of person.  I do like cleanliness, although you wouldn’t know it from looking at my office.  (I like to say, I’m clean enough to be healthy, and dirty enough to be happy.)  But as a rabbi in the Progressive tradition, my real concern is not that you fastidiously follow all ritual.  To put it differently, I can’t say I’m worried about your well-being, should you inadvertently spend Pesach with some hidden chametz in your houses.  Rather, my concern is this.  I want the lessons that our tradition has drawn from the ritual to affect you.  I want you to be able to benefit from the ego-settling that the Rabbis identified as a by-product of this ritual.  I want you to recognise the danger of being ‘puffed up’ and respond to the need to ‘un-leaven’ your ego.  If only for a time.  So that, when Passover is past and Shavuot is approaching, we will benefit from the exercise of making room inside ourselves for Torah.  For God.
Not an easy proposition, is it?  But let’s be honest…much of what is worthwhile, is not easy.  But easy or not, may this come to pass…Amen.  

Monday, March 18, 2013

My Presentation to a Synposium...


entitled 'Developing and Promoting Peace Initiatives,' 21 March 2013 at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.


A Community Spiritual Leader’s Perspective
Jews and Muslims Building Bridges
Rabbi Don Levy

So you’ve heard a brief biography of my background, and you might be thinking:  what’s a retired military officer doing, speaking to us about developing and promoting peace initiatives?  And if such a question is in your mind right now, you could be entirely ‘forgiven’ for thinking so.  This, even though I was a chaplain, and not a line officer.  Chaplains in the US forces, as in the Australian forces, are unarmed by policy in order to preserve their Geneva Conventions status as non-combatants.  Even so, it would be disingenuous to claim that their role has no connection with the mission to win in any conflict.
                So if my ‘peacenik’ credentials are automatically suspect by my past associations, what am I doing in this panel?  In order to qualify as a worker sand teacher for peace, doesn’t one have to be a conspicuous, and passionate opponent of any form of military activity?
                Knowing that there are a range of possible answers to the above question, I’ll let the listener decide based on his or her own sensibilities.  I wish to talk about peace, and about learning to strive for peace, from a far more personal perspective.  In my home country and here we are truly blessed to have representative forms of government that make our elected officials accountable to the voters for their actions:  in the realm of making peace, as in every other policy area.  Oh, we all complain about the difficulty of making our respective governments truly accountable.  Most of our frustration in this area stems from the fact that each person’s view is never the only view.  There is a certain tyranny in majority rule.  But it is superior to every other tyranny.  Or, to put it differently, as the late Sir Winston Churchill famously observed:  It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the others that have been tried.
                I therefore wish to focus, when I think of what I as a religious leader can do to effect peace, on a more limited realm than that of nations and statecraft.  After all, the Hebrew word ‘shalom’ which is translated as ‘peace’ actually means ‘wholeness.’  It doesn’t mean armistice or treaty.  We achieve ‘shalom’ through a feeling of wholeness that radiates from inside ourselves.  This wholeness, ideally, translates into an attitude toward other human beings that encompasses ever-enlarging concentric circles of humanity.  As our own state of wholeness becomes further and further fixed, we feel free to share it wider.  The wholeness about which I speak, is really the same as happiness.  Happiness can only be established within the individual, but once the individual achieves it, it influences how that individual interacts with the world.  Happy individuals ultimately translate into a happier world.  Happy individuals do not spread unhappiness.  For example, show me a prospective suicide bomber…and I’ll show you a patently unhappy individual.  Happy people, in their condition of wholeness, do not commit atrocities against others.  It’s just a fact.
                So the key to peace, to me as a religious leader, teacher, and guide, resides within the individual soul.  But I want to talk to you about peace on a slightly larger scale than that.  This is, after all, an interfaith ‘Peace Education Forum.’  So I want to talk about peace in the context of regard between individuals that reaches across religious lines.
                A moment ago, I asserted that wholeness, ideally, translates into an attitude toward other human beings that encompasses ever-enlarging concentric circles of humanity as our own state of wholeness becomes further and further fixed.  So when we first internalise the need for, and begin the quest for achieving wholeness, the first beneficiaries will be the ones closest to us.  One’s nuclear family.  Then one’s extended family and circle of friends.  Then one’s specific community, such as a religious community if one belongs to one.  And then other communities, religious or other.  And so on.
                Sometimes, in our efforts at peacemaking, we will skip intermediate circles and reach instinctively or deliberately for those within a wider circle.  Specifically, we’ll reach for those whose group identification would indicate that they are about as far apart as two groups living in the same city could be.  As an example, a Jewish group and a Muslim group reach out to one another.  The observer would be forgiven for assuming that members of the two groups had just made such a ‘jump.’
                After all, conventional wisdom holds that if any two groups within our society should have a hard time reaching out to one another, and developing regard for one another, it would be Jews and Muslims, correct?  The ‘proof’ of this is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  This conflict is commonly seen as proof that there is an essential conflict between Jews and Muslims.  This, despite that there are also Christian Palestinians and Arabs.  It is generally understood that, at the present time, Islam is by far the most influential religious force among Palestinian Arabs.  Also, in the wider world, the most vocal voices in protest against the power of the Israeli state vis-à-vis the Palestinians come from Muslim religious circles, encompassing all Muslims – not just Arabs.  It is therefore sometimes surprising to casual observers that there is so much effort being expended in Jewish and Muslim communities to reach out to one another.  I’m thinking specifically in the USA, but in my short residence here in Australia I’ve seen some evidence that it’s happening here as well if on a smaller scale.  And as an American Rabbi, I am something of a veteran of these efforts.  I would therefore like to focus my talk on the mutual reaching out of Jewish and Muslim communities toward one another.  What do we learn from such efforts?  About ourselves as well as about ‘The Other’?  And beyond the Jewish-Muslim equation, what do we learn about peace-making in general?
                There was a time when I personally was a ‘prisoner’ to the perception that I identified above.  That there was an essential conflict between Jews and Muslims.  Then, in 1983 to 1984, I lived for a year in Sinop, Turkey where I came to understand that it was more perception than fact.  I remember wandering around Sinop and elsewhere in Turkey hoping that I didn’t ‘look’ or ‘sound’ too Jewish since I was in a Muslim country.  And then one day, I let my guard down.  A teenage girl, the daughter of a Turk in the town where I was living whom I had befriended, was showing me around the local archaeological museum.  Sinop has a history as an outpost of Christian influence in Anatolia, and in the museum was a display of Christian burial steles found in the town.  The girl turned to me and asked me about some symbology found chiselled into the steles.  “Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” I told her without thinking. “I’m a Jew, not a Christian.”
                The girl looked at me thoughtfully, completed the tour, and then we walked back to her father’s restaurant.  As I sat down to drink tea, the girl huddled with her father and their two employees on the other side of the room.  After a moment, they came over to me.
                “Don,” the father, whose name was Nezamettin Güçlü, said. “You are a Jew?”
                I supposed that, at that point, there was no denying it. “Evet,” I said, meaning ‘yes.’
                “Don,” Nezamettin said. “You are sünnetli?”
                I pulled out my pocket Turkish-English dictionary and feverishly looked up the word ‘sünnetli.’  It means, circumcised.
                “Evet,” I said.  “I am sünnetli.”
                “You don’t eat domuz,” he said, more a declaration than a question.  I knew that domuz is pork.
                “No,” I replied. “I don’t eat domuz.”
                “Ibrahim is your father,” he added.
                Ibrahim, Abraham, I thought.  Same guy. “Evet,” I confirmed. “Ibrahim is my father.”
                Nezamettin reached out and embraced me. “We are brothers!” he proclaimed.  And one by one, the other Turkish men in the room who had heard the exchange, came over to embrace me in a bear hug and proclaim “Biz kardeshler” – we are brothers.
                From the experience, I learned that there are commonalities that tie us together with those for whom such ties might be counter-intuitive.  It was a powerful lesson, reinforcing what we Jews are taught in our Mishnah, one of our cornerstone religious texts.  There, in Tractate Avot 4:1, we are taught:  Who is wise?  He that learns from every one.  So we must go through life with an open mind, seeing what we can learn from each person we encounter.
                But back to Jewish-Muslim relations.  Let me tell you two stories ‘from the trenches’ as it were, one of shining success and one of dubious results.
                After I had served eight years as an Air Force chaplain, I found myself stationed in Ramstein, Germany.  For the first time in my career, I was to serve with a Muslim colleague, an Imam, on the same staff.  Hamza Al Mubarak, my colleague, was an American, from El Paso, Texas and an adult convert to Islam from the African-American Christianity of his upbringing.  Not only did we serve on staff together; we served in the same work-group, the ‘Interfaith Division’ consisting of Hamza, myself and our boss – a Greek Orthodox priest!  And we were a very effective – and cordial – workgroup at that.
                But I really got to know my colleague Hamza well when, sometime after my arrival in Germany, the senior staff chaplain informed us that the commanding general had given the chaplain’s office a grant of half a million dollars to build a new facility.  And he, the boss, was ‘giving’ the funds to us, Hamza and me, to build a chapel designed for, and dedicated specifically to our two congregations.
                Hearing the pronouncement, in retrospect, the only thing that left us speechless was the generosity of the grant.  It didn’t occur to either of us that Muslims and Jews sharing a building would seem odd.  Especially so, when Hamza looked at me with smiling eyes and said: “The good news is that, from here, to face either Jerusalem or Mecca you have to face the same way.”
                With the knowledge that each of us needed the building to have the same orientation, we met with the German architect and began visualising the new facility.  Each of us would have a separate sanctuary for prayer and classes, and the sanctuaries would be a mirror image of one another – but with different furnishings, each appropriate to its occupants’ faith.  And there would be a shared entrée and meeting room.  The architect became really caught up in the project, visiting both mosques and synagogues in the region to get a perspective.  Between us we came up with a design for a facility that would be not only functional but also beautiful.  So beautiful, that the construction cost overran the budgeted amount by a quarter-million dollars.  But the general being caught up in the excitement of the project covered the overrun! (Leaving me thinking, perhaps the Messiah has come…)
                I’ll never forget when we inaugurated the new chapel and the first Friday night that we both used it.  It was the Sabbath immediately preceding Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year festival.  And it happened that Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, would begin on the same day.  So this was the Sabbath where the New Moon that would bring both our important festivals was announced.  Our separate prayer services ran almost simultaneously that night.  And afterward, the two congregations mingled as they spilled out of their respective spaces.  As the fellowship time went on and the hour became late, I began looking for my children, to collect them and go home.  I didn’t see them anywhere about, until I happened to look through the open door into the Muslim chapel and saw them playing with the Imam’s kids.  My colleague had brought a ‘Foosball’ table into their side, and my kids were playing a spirited game with Hamza’s kids as other children from the two communities looked on.
                That image – of the rabbi’s kids and the imam’s kids playing Foosball – became a powerful metaphor for what we’d done in creating the sacred space for our two communities to share.  The lesson of the shared chapel was this; we represented two unique groups in American life.  Each was distinct.  And yet, there was far more that we shared in common than that divided us.  We were all Americans living in Germany.  We were all serving in the uniform of our country.  And as we came to learn, we all faced the common angst of members of minority groups.  Each of us hoped that we could maintain our unique heritage and identity as a legacy for our children.  These were the things that were on our minds when we mingled on Friday nights – not the differing positions we might automatically take on, say, the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  The latter, while is certainly on the collective ‘minds’ of our respective religious communities, really had nothing to do with us as we interacted.
                The story swept the European media; for the next two years, I found myself constantly giving interviews to newspaper, television and radio reporters brought in by our base’s Public Affairs Officer.  After a few such interviews, I questioned why the story should be so interesting as to be reported on repeatedly.  “It’s just a chapel building costing less than a million dollars,” I pointed out. “With the USA involved in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why is this such a big deal?”  The Public Affairs Officer, a German civilian woman, told me: “You don’t understand the local mentality, Rabbi.  In my village there are Catholics and Protestants whose families have not talked to one another for 500 years and more!  To them, as well as to Europeans generally, the idea of Muslims and Jews being friendly, is incredible.”
                So, from this experience with a small military base chapel in Germany, I learned valuable lessons about the nature of transcending differences between groups whom one might ‘expect’ to find dialogue difficult.  But then, in the next phase of my life, I had a reinforcing lesson from a not-so-positive experience.
                After I retired from the US Air Force, I moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado.  It was there that I had my first job offer, at Temple Beit Torah, a small congregation there.  And I knew the city well, having been based there as Jewish chaplain to the nearby US Air Force Academy a few years before retiring.  Once settled in to my new home and position, I was approached by a man named Arshad Yusoufi.  An immigrant from Pakistan, Mr Yusoufi was one of the acknowledged leaders in the local Islamic society.
                I already knew Yusoufi.  Several years earlier when I was working with the cadets at the Air Force Academy, he was our consultant for religious issues concerning Muslim cadets.  At that time, we did not have a Muslim chaplain, nor was there anybody local whom we could hire as a contractor to establish and lead a Muslim religious program for our Muslim cadets.  But Arshad was available on request to consult on religious accommodation matters, as well as to teach the chaplains and other staff about Islam.  This was important in those years – 2001 through 2004 – as we in America were struggling to understand our Muslim neighbours and their unique concerns in the wake of the September 11th attacks on our country by Al Qaida.  During my tenure at the Air Force Academy, I had gotten to know Arshad, and found him a person with whom I could work well in a multi-faith environment.  
                Now, with my return to Colorado Springs, I sat down with Arshad and we discussed the possibility of creating some sort of dialogue between our two communities.  We were both keenly aware of the notion that Jews and Muslims sharing friendship is counter-intuitive to some.  If we would succeed, our success would serve as a powerful statement to the wider community.
                Arshad’s proposal was for him to lecture to my Wednesday night Judaism class, after which he would reciprocate by inviting me to speak to members of his congregation.  He felt that any general interaction between our communities should start from a basis of mutual knowledge in each about the other’s faith and way of life.  If it wasn’t the course of action I might have followed as a first choice, I could see the logic in it.  And I could see the logic in his appearance in my community preceding mine in his.  Arshad feared that his community would prove to be somewhat more insular than mine.  He was not concerned about his reception in my community.  But he seemed to have some concern for my reception in his.  He felt that, if he were well-received amongst the Jews of Temple Beit Torah, it would help him in paving the way for my successful reciprocal visit to his community.  And that would ultimately lead to a fruitful dialogue between members of our respective communities.
Another aspect that I thought would ultimately lead to a fruitful dialogue was the idea of keeping the Israeli-Palestinian dispute out of it.  In our conversation, one of the first things Arshad had said was that this political football should be left outside the door, and I couldn’t agree with him more.  Since this is a bigger issue than any of us and our local concerns, what was the point of having it as a spoiler?  Our two communities were simply not going to agree on it.  The goal was to find common ground, and after my experience in Germany I felt that the common ground would not be hard to find, iff we could keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off the agenda.  If we did succeed in spurring serious dialogue or fellowship, then obviously the issue would ultimately be one of discussion between members of the two groups.  But it would serve no positive purpose to bring it into the dialogue until a degree of familiarity, and trust, could be achieved. 
My students liked the idea of veering temporarily off from the curriculum we’d been following, for the opportunity to learn more about Islam.  I scheduled the sessions – one for a lecture, and one for questions arising, and answers.  On the night of the lecture, my class was far larger than usual; members of my community were really interested to hear what Arshad had to say.
                The experience was as challenging, as my previous experience of interacting with Muslims had been positive.  For one thing, if you know Jews at all, you know that we have a tendency to question authority.  Any authority.  We’re simply not ‘Yes Men.’  We like a good verbal sparring.  The very name ‘Israel’ means ‘he will strive with God.’  But Arshad’s lecture style was very much from an ‘expert’ mindset.  Whether this stems from his Islam, or from the part of the world from which he came, I cannot tell.  But the mindset immediately put my Jews on the defensive.
                Then there was the fact that Arshad was coming from the position of an orthodox Muslim, and my Jews were definitely not Orthodox Jews.  So the difference between an orthodox believer and a reformist stood between Arshad and my Jews in addition to the differences between a Muslim and a Jew.  At some point, when I sensed a building hostility towards my guest speaker over his positions on the role of women in religion, I felt the need to point out this difference.  That helped to calm things down a bit, and helped my Jews to see Arshad in the context of who he was.
                But the worst came the second week, when Arshad was supposed to simply open the floor to questions.  For some reason, he felt compelled to begin his presentation that night by lecturing my congregation on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.  With a script, and PowerPoint slides and maps and all.  This, after our conversation that had led to his presentations, where we agreed that it wouldn’t be part of the agenda. 
                Members of my congregation reacted as you would expect Jews to react, given the background of different positions on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as well as my observations about how Jews take to being lectured.  Arshad left that night feeling more than a little beaten up.  In truth, I felt he deserved it.  And it effectively ended, at least for the foreseeable future, the idea of creating dialogue between our two communities.  A reciprocal invitation to me, to speak to the Muslim community was not forthcoming.  The whole idea of dialogue dropped, and before Arshad and I could even imagine trying again, I was a ‘lame duck’ in my position and not in the position to start anything new.
                So for the unwillingness to leave out of our exchange, an issue over which none of us has any control to begin with, a potential alliance between two local communities was averted.  If not permanently, then at least for the foreseeable future.  And that was too bad.  Our two small congregations, had we succeeded in talking to one another and getting to know one another, may have succeeded in creating a mutual peace.  But even more than that, the experience could have taught our respective groups important lessons about the nature of peace and how it is achieved.  And it may have positively influenced the greater community.
                My purpose here is not to defame the Muslim colleague concerned.  None of you have ever met the man, nor will you probably ever encounter him.  And in reality, I do not absolve myself of responsibility for how the sessions went.  I bring it up only because I learned from it.  And perhaps, you can learn from this difficult lesson.  You can learn something about educating your respective communities about peace and the peace-making process.
                It is my firm conviction that each human being can find ample common ground with each other human being.  Did not one God create all of us in His image?  If so, then we have far more that ties us together than that pulls us apart. 
Let me put it another way.  Two great Jewish sages were arguing over which verse is the most important verse in the Torah, in the Jewish Bible.  One asserted that it was Leviticus 19:18:  You shall love your neighbour as yourself.  The second sage argued that a more important verse was Genesis 10:1 that declares:  These are the generations of the sons of Noah:  Shem, Ham and Yapheth.  Children were born to them after the flood.
Now, if you were to agree with the first sage, and hold that the most important verse in the Torah is You shall love your neighbour as yourself, you would probably be in the majority.  What could be more basic to the idea of establishing God’s kingdom on earth, than loving your neighbour as yourself?  And specifically, how does These are the generations of the sons of Noah measure up to the concept of loving your neighbour in resonance, grandeur and importance?
Well, first you need to understand that ‘love your neighbour’ in the language of the Torah means ‘love your kinsman.’  The Hebrew word re’echa, here translated ‘your neighbour,’ doesn’t necessarily mean the one who lives in close proximity.  It means ‘your kinsman,’ or, to put it differently, ‘your fellow Jew.’  Since the Torah was written and addressed specifically to the children of Israel, this is the meaning the verse has to have.
But, when Juxtaposed to Genesis 10:1, another meaning is possible.  These are the generations of the sons of Noah comes to inform us that, after the Flood, the world was re-populated by one family.  And that inevitably means that we are all blood relatives.  Even though we come from different parts of the world, and we manifest unique racial traits that make us look somewhat different from one another, and we speak different languages.  So when we combine the two verses, then and only then does it become clear that for each one of us, re’echa, your neighbour, really means ‘your fellow human being.’
                So despite having different religious traditions, and different family histories, and different narratives, we are all related.  As blood relatives.  And we therefore share much in common.  More should unite us, than divide us.  If we cannot see this essential truth, then we are focusing on the wrong things.
                So finding wholeness, a wholeness that we can share with others around us, demands that we see the essential wholeness in humanity.  And the way to recognise that, is to focus on that which we hold in common.  At some point, it may be necessary to have dialogue on the things upon which we disagree.  But they are best left outside the door until we can look at the others in the room and see them as our brothers and sisters.  There’s nothing cynical about this.  Great things are accomplished in stages.
                And the challenges of Jews and Muslims are not really unique.  Rather, they are emblematic of the challenge of making peace with anybody whom we might consider to be ‘The Other.’  The first step is to acknowledge, and celebrate, our common humanity.  Our common aspirations and fears.  Our common desires.  To turn ‘The Other’ into ‘My Brother.’  But I am most likely, as the expression goes, ‘preaching to the choir.’  Clearly in this room, what I am saying should resonate deeply.  If we conduct our relations with all others on the basis of acknowledging and celebrating that which we hold in common, then we will have ‘broken the code’ of living in harmony with one another.  My experience, especially my experience in the arena of Jewish-Muslim dialogue, has taught me that.  Thank you, and shalom.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Drash for Shabbat Vayikra - Enjoy!


Urgency in Exile

George Santayana famously declared:  Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Surely everyone in this room today who studied history in high school, has heard this citation from the noted 20th century pragmatist.  You probably heard it on the first day of your history class.  I’m guessing it was recited to you by your teacher as a way to get your attention and motivate you toward the serious study of history.
We Jews have a reputation of being good at remembering the past.  We have all kinds of rituals and occasions whose stated purpose is to cause us to remember.  The Passover Seder.  Yom Hasho’ah.  Every year, on the approach of the yahrzeit, the anniversary of the death of a parent, a sibling, a spouse, or (God forbid) a child, you receive a notice of the anniversary from the temple office.  You are invited to accept an honour here at the temple.  You send the form back in – preferably with a donation! – and make sure you attend on that day.  You come up to bless the Torah, and I give you a blessing.  In that blessing I say something about your loss which, I hope, will ring true and resonate for you.
So in our religious life as a Jewish congregation, we do all kinds of things to keep memories alive.  For the collective, and for individuals within the collective.  And we think we’re the world class at memory.  And much of the world would agree.   In the late 1980’s, the Dalai Lama famously hosted a Jewish group at his headquarters in Dharamsala, India.  He wanted to learn from them, how Jews have kept their memories alive during a 2,000 year exile.  Facing what may very well prove to be a lengthy exile of many of his people from their ancestral home, Tibet, he wanted to benefit from the experience of us Jews.  The event has been extensively chronicled.  If it sounds interesting, I recommend you read The Jew in the Lotus by Roger Kamenetz, a university professor who was part of the Jewish delegation.
But – and here I’m going to burst your bubble a bit – the truth is that we’re really not that good at remembering.  At least, not as good as we like to think that we are.  Like many peoples, we remember very selectively.  Sometimes, memory serves us as nothing more than a tool to support an agenda.  That is, instead of serving as a tool for apprehending and understanding the truth.
This week’s Haftarah is a reading from Isaiah.  This is the post-exilic Isaiah, Isaiah the comforter.  In the sixth century BCE, our people experienced an exile to Babylon at the hands of King Nebuchadnezzar.  Not that the entire people was marched across the Fertile Crescent to the Rivers of Babylon.  No, the Babylonian emperor selected only the religious and civic elite for resettlement.  His method was to remove the head, so he could control the tail.  Once the elites reached Babylon, they were not oppressed.  They were given autonomy to form communities and engage in whatever activities might please them.  The exiles laid the foundations that would enable the Jewish people to survive as a group through future exiles.  They translated a temple-based, sacrificial cult into a portable faith driven by dogmas that they began to develop, and buttressed by rituals that they conceived.  Removed from their land and the people left behind, they did not sit back and enjoy the leisure of a ruling class with nobody to rule.  They created and built with an urgency borne out of a knowledge that they were building something that would have to endure if it was to serve the people Israel well.  They built so well, that a thousand years later the community they built in Babylon was to produce what is arguably the most important Jewish text next to the written Torah:  the Babylonian Talmud.
In this week’s reading from Isaiah, the great prophet exhorts the exiles in Babylon to focus on what’s important.  To not fret over their inability to perform sacrifices, but rather on the purpose behind those sacrifices.  To work toward being a nation truly worthy of the unique destiny God has assigned them.  To rise above the disappointments they have experienced, and keep their eyes on the prize.
The exiles of the sixth century BCE certainly did rise above the deep funk that their exile might have engendered.  In so doing, they modelled for us the way to make the most of any exile.  Their lesson is certainly valid and vital to us today.  It calls to us out of the past and exhorting us to make the most of our exile.
Here we sit, 26 centuries after the exile of Nebuchadnezzar, in a land of comfort and plenty.  And we whine incessantly about how hard it is.  Hard to maintain our traditions.  Hard to pass them down meaningfully to our children.  Hard to feel at home with ourselves and our God, even as we struggle to be at home in the physical world of our making.  Many of us have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the struggle entirely.  Thrown up our hands and said, Never mind!  An example.  Our ancestors and a remnant of us today look forward to the arrival of the Seventh Day as an opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with our God and His wonders.  But many Jews today think only of popping open a few cold ones and kicking back with American Idol.  And then they grouse about the lack of interest in Judaism by their kids.
Our distant ancestors 2,600 years ago faced similar temptations.  Oh, they didn’t have American Idol…I least I don’t think they did.  But surely they could have let the memory of a faith that once was fade into the past.  They could have focused on the comforts of the present.  But they didn’t.  The work that they did, promised that Judaism and the Jewish people would survive.  This, if only future generations would care enough to accept their gift – and build upon it.
The juxtaposition of this week’s Torah and Haftarah readings reminds us of the importance of making the most of our exile.  The Torah reading, from the first chapter of the Book of Leviticus, instructs us in the minutiae of the sacrificial cult.  The Haftarah reading, from Isaiah, exhorts us to focus on the message behind the sacrificial cult.  On keeping the faith, even when we can’t keep the practices.
Some days, I have to admit, I’m not too optimistic for the future.  The past is sometimes inconvenient to remember.  It doesn’t call out to us with enough urgency.  Or perhaps, we are intent on ignoring its message.  Because the challenges of exile do not change.  They remain essentially the same over time.  Our ancestors, in their industriousness, in their urgency to keep the memory of all that is important alive, would not let the torpor of exile lull them to sleep.  My prayer is that, when this generation is but history, someone will be able to say the same of us.  This is a worthy prayer.  May it come to pass.  Shabbat shalom.  

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Drash for Vayakhel.Pekudei-Hachodesh

Ahh!  Shabbatg again!  Thank G-d!

To Live and Not Die

Years ago, when I served in the military (in the USA) I became used to cigarette smoking as a habit indulged by many of the people around me.  It was just part of the military culture.  The mechanics of lighting, tending, smoking, and dousing cigarettes were, for many, a structure that kept their hands busy and occupied during long duty days and nights.  Additionally, the stimulant nicotine provided a boost to keep the smoker alert during long watches.  Later, when the armed forces began pushing healthy living as a readiness issue, smoking in the military workplace became rarer and rarer and ultimately forbidden.

In civilian life, smoking was not as common a habit even 30 years ago.  And in Progressive Jewish circles it has long been a rare indulgence.  So it used to mystify me that smoking among Orthodox men was, until fairly recently, quite normative.  Among my Orthodox cousins, smoke breaks or smoking at one’s desk were a common part of life.  Except on Shabbat.  After that rush to smoke one last cigarette before candle-lighting time, the Orthodox smoker quits ‘cold turkey’ once every seven days – for 25 hours, and then after Havdallah usually lights up the first one of the new week with relish.  Of course, the smoker who is observant of Halachah will not light up on Shabbat since we are instructed in this week’s Torah portion: “You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)  That same instruction yields a string of prohibitions regarding Shabbat:  on driving, use of electricity, cooking, and the like.  To someone who believes literally that it is the will of G-d that no fire be kindled on the Sabbath day, it makes sense to scrupulously avoid any action that could be construed as kindling a fire.  And why would one want to transgress G-d’s law, either wilfully or inadvertently?  So the believer avoids anything that alludes to the lighting – and by extension, the dousing – of fire.  Also, anything that could be construed as melachah – work or, according to one understanding, anything that alludes to creation.  Because in the verse immediately preceding the one cited above, we’re told “whoever does any melachah on [the Sabbath] will die.”

Now the statement that the one not ceasing his work on Shabbat will die can be taken to understand that he will be liable for the death penalty for transgressing G-d’s law.  And surely, this is the understanding of many Jews:  the traditionalist and the progressive alike.  For the traditionalist, it can be a strong motivation to avoid transgressing it.  For the progressive, it is often taken as one of many ‘proofs’ that the Torah, rather than being a statement of G-d’s love for us, is a document depicting a judgemental and vindictive deity.  They’re both right in a sense, and yet – there’s another way to read the verse in question.

If we look at Shabbat less as a divine imperative and more as a divine gift, then the statement “whoever does any melachah on [the Sabbath] will die,” takes on a much different meaning.  The corollary is “whoever ceases from melachah will live.”  Instead of seeing Shabbat as an onus, we can see it as a lifesaver.  As a ticket to freedom.  Because it’s Shabbat, I am freed from the stress of my everyday toil.  As people who live in an age of over-work, over-programming, and over-achievement, we need the rest that Shabbat brings.  And the Torah grants it to us.  But if so, why are so many Progressive Jews not buying?

The answer is complex, but I think it has something to do with the way that contemporary life tends to turn us into objects.  We internalise the message that our achievements are our essence as individuals.  Look, I’m not knocking achievement – rather the mindset makes us slaves to our next feat.  Every day I meet Jews who have bought into the message that our accomplishments are what define us.  When we no longer accomplish, our lives cease to be worthwhile.  We allow contemporary life to turn us into objects, and we also turn those around us into objects.  Take the discussion over euthanasia and the value of going against conventional morality to enable people to experience ‘a good death.’  On one hand, it is seen as good to imagine that we don’t need to consider ourselves slaves to the possibility of a drawn-out, painful, messy death.  On the other hand, I find myself constantly cringing when I hear Jews proclaim that they want to check out of life as soon as they become dependent, or unable to achieve the things that they’ve allowed to define them.

In this mindset, relationships become worthwhile only for the benefit they bring us.  When that benefit no longer exists, the relationship is disposable.  One only need look around us to see that this is the extent to which we have allowed the value of relationships to become diminished.  And this is antithetical to the message of Judaism:  that our essence as individuals is the divine spark within us.  “So G-d created man in His image; in the image of G-d He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)  If G-d, in whose image we’re made, can step back from the work of creation and just be, then we too have the privilege of periodically stepping back from our melachah to just be.  To take stock.  To think.  Didn’t the philosopher Descartes proclaim:  I think, therefore I am?  To me, that sounds a lot better than I work, therefore I am.  If our essence as individuals resides in our productivity, then woe to us when we stop being productive.

This is why, in the Kiddush that we offer at the onset of Shabbat, we acknowledge the Sabbath’s serving as a double remembrance to us.  We acknowledge it as zecher lema’aseh vereishit, a memorial to the act of creation; when we cease from our toil on the seventh day in imitation of God, we acknowledge God’s sovereignty.  And we also acknowledge it as zecher litzi’at Mitzrayim, a memorial to the exit from Egypt; since God led us out of slavery, we don’t need to be slaves to the constant need to accomplish.  A slave’s value is in his productivity.  A free person’s value is in his life.  Even when we are not productive, our lives have intrinsic value and are not disposable.  If we interrupt our productivity for one day a week, we will regularly remind ourselves of this truth.  It’s a reminder we need, if we are going to live, and not die.

And regarding smoking on Shabbat?  If you’re still smoking, even if you don’t think G-d cares whether you do it on Shabbat or not, resolve to rest from this habit on this coming Sabbath.  And even better:  enlist your friends and loved ones – those non-disposable relationships in your life – to give you the positive encouragement you need to take the next Shabbat as an occasion to quit for good.  So that you may live, and not die.  Shabbat shalom!