Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

After Pittsburgh: A Narrower Bridge, A Net Like Never Before

Here is my D'var Torah from Saturday, Nov. 3, 2018, the Shabbat after the killings at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh. You can read it or download it as a pdf file here.

It is so good to be here together this morning. I know that it is a great comfort to our friends, our sisters and brothers in Pittsburgh, to know that people are gathered in synagogues all over, thinking about them, mourning with them, and doing something to live in the legacy of the eleven people who were killed at Tree of Life Congregation, while they were doing what we are doing. I have been in touch with Jewish professional colleagues in Pittsburgh, and they are exhausted, and also amazing. It means a lot to them that we care and that we are here in our congregations this Shabbat.

We are drawn here this Shabbat, at a time when we need to reach beyond ourselves -- for the divine, for each other, and deep into ourselves. I know for me, having Shabbat waiting during a difficult week helps me find my footing -- knowing there will be a chance to take a breath, that precious words will be set up for me to sing with other people and say alone, that we will celebrate.  We are drawn to a Bat Mitzvah, so we can be inspired, and I want to acknowledge and thank Lexi and her parents, Matt and Kyle, for being Beth Abraham’s partners in this particular Shabbat which suddenly became different from what any of us anticipated.

I want to welcome you who have come for the occasion of Lexi’s Bat Mitzvah, and you who have come to be with us because all over America people have decided to join with the Jewish community, in solidarity and in defiance.

I hope all of you know that our synagogue leadership has been focused this week on taking care of you -- thinking about how you can be safe here, being available for you. We have had children and staff and members and guests here from first thing Sunday morning throughout the week. Many people have spent a lot of time going over security decisions and listening to anyone who has reached out and needed to talk on any level. I want to say a thank you to the Nashua Police Department for being so responsive to us from last Saturday onward, even anticipating our needs.

Last Saturday at the Tree of Life Congregation, eleven people were murdered and six were injured by a man who wanted to wipe out Jews, because he believes that we and the other people we stand by are a threat to white America.

And despite what he did, we have seen the unbelievable spirit of the Jewish neighborhood in Squirrel Hill, and the unstoppable force of mitzvah, even in the midst of horror and exhaustion.

The shomrim who stay with bodies before a Jewish burial who had to fulfill that responsibility at an active crime scene.The chevra kadisha groups who prepare bodies for burial, and the chevras from elsewhere who came to help, in case it was too much for the local people to bear to prepare friends whose bodies had been torn by bullets. The Jewish medical staff who treated and stabilized the gunman and even talked with him. Mitzvot are relentless.

I have had to give too many sermons at times like these. I have reread them all in the past few days. I don’t want to say the same thing again and again, with just the locations and details changed. I believe we are at a point of tremendous power and risk -- when we could tip into disillusionment, about anti-Semitism and white nationalism in this country -- or when we could help fuel a cascade in the other direction, the direction of tikkun. That would take some courage, and an ability to look hard into the darkness in new ways, but I believe the opportunity is there. And to Lexi, to you and to your classmates, I say that being Bat and Bar Mitzvah has never been more important, being a mitzvah person, and we need every single one of you to get to work with us.

I put on the study sheet a teaching from the Mishnah,the first book of Jewish law after the Torah, from about the year 200. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said: I am like a man of seventy years, and I did not achieve an understanding of why the Exodus from Egypt is said at night until Ben Zoma explained this verse from the Torah to me: “In order that you will remember the going out from Egypt all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3) -- “the days of your life” means the days; “all the days of your life” means the nights. But the Sages say: “the days of your life” means this world; “all the days of your life” means to bring the messianic days. [Mishnah Berachot 1:5]

If you have been to a Passover Seder, you might recognize this paragraph -- it’s one of the paragraphs you might gloss over with discussion or event skip. But this week the passage called out to me all of a sudden, the way Torah does when we really need it.

The Talmud says Rabbi Elazar wasn’t actually old when he taught this teaching -- he was eighteen. But looking out on his world one day, he suddenly felt like he was seventy.

As though there would not be enough time in his life to see the world he was dreaming of. As though he couldn’t escape the trauma of the persecutions of Jews before his lifetime. One day at the age of eighteen, all his hair suddenly turned gray.

Rabbi Elazar was thinking about how we recall the story of the Exodus from Egypt. It’s is the original story of anti-Semitism, the first violent attack on Jews as a group for being Jews, the first time someone gives a supposed “reason” for that. Rabbi Elazar had seen this story as a story about the day of liberation -- about the march of the Jews into freedom at high noon, with their hands held high. As a story about light -- of a mighty God whose outstretched arm could overpower any worldly oppression.

Ben Zoma taught him that it wouldn’t be enough to tell that story that way -- you have to face the story of the night as well. The Exodus is the power of God on the side of the hated -- but it is also a story about that hate. The worry that it is not actually gone but just something we ran away from, that will find its way back to us again.

I used to think that there were two kinds of Jews: those who were obsessed by the darkness, and those who could see light and be inspired by it. And I had no patience once upon a time, for the Jews who chose to look at the darkness so much. But as my own hairs are slowly graying, I think I have started to get what Rabbi Elazar learned from Ben Zoma.

When you are basking in the light of Jewish freedom, don’t pretend there is no darkness. And when you are in the darkness, as we have been this week, don’t close your eyes to lights that might in fact be growing.

Yesterday, the front page of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had, across the top, in large Hebrew print the words יתגדל ויתקדש שמה רבה Yitgadal V’Yitkadash Sh’may Rabbah, the opening words of the Mourners’ Kaddish. And every single page of the paper’s desktop website had those words at the top. The business page, the sports page. Even the page with an article about the downtown Pittsburgh Christmas tree lighting. When has that ever happened?

Our U.S. Senator, Maggie Hassan, made phone calls this week to each one of the rabbis in New Hampshire personally. We are a minority in a small state, but Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein can’t do what she did.

It wasn’t for a perfunctory conversation. We talked for some 15 minutes, and she asked if there was anything specific we needed. We talked together about how all the different levels of hate and animosity today do or don’t interact. She said that I should tell you that tens of thousands of Granite Staters are thinking about us and standing with us.

Some of the most remarkable things have happened when Jews were not even around. I’ve been carrying with me all week these notes that the Unitarian Universalist Church took time in their service last Sunday to write us, adult words and some scribbles and pictures from children even. This is just one example of all the support sent to me and to us this week.

And at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Nashua, something happened last Sunday, which was a special day in their calendar, the anniversary of the founding of Lutheranism, of the day Martin Luther pinned his theses on the church door.

Pastor Dave said to the congregation that they could not just celebrate all the wisdom and leadership of Luther --  they also had to mention Luther’s anti-Semitism, and to mention how Luther’s words were later used by the Nazis. They didn’t talk about this because he and I had spoken, which we haven’t, or because we were there, because none of us were.

This is people who don’t know that many Jews being told that they have to reckon with their own religious group’s responsibility in the history of anti-Semitism. Not during an educational program, or a joint Holocaust remembrance. When has that happened?

I have long said that we live in a time when Jews have more more allies than ever before. And this week we can see that we are standing in a new daylight, as Jews in this country. This is not the same as what has been before. Somehow, even in the dark, we need to see that.

And yet, Rabbi Elazar learns from Ben Zoma that it is foolish to say this unless we have the honesty to talk about the night and face it. Night represents anti-Semitism lurking where we didn’t see it coming and we don’t expect it. Night is where the factors that drive anti-Semitism and white nationalism are hard to sort out, where the relationships among them are murky.

I was a person who shut my eyes to extent of American anti-Semitism especially in its white supremacist form, for years. Last week was the anti-Semitism of hate and violence, but there is also an anti-Semitism and a white nationalism of ideas that sound, like the new Pharaoh’s words at the start of Exodus, kind of reasonable to enough people.

This predates the president, and I said before the election from this pulpit that if he lost, I feared that we would think we were out of the woods. He is not an anti-Semite personally; the white nationalists revile him for having Jews in his family and his inner circle and his cabinet. And he is in the next room over, so to speak, calling his political opposition people who have “launched an assault... on the safety of every single American,” as he said in Texas the week before the shooting. That’s talking about born Americans, not even outsiders. It’s not surprising if someone who hears that, and already wants to intimidate or harm someone in a minority group, is emboldened. Not when so many people who we wouldn’t call white supremacists hear this kind of thing and cheer enthusiastically. In the dark, we don’t know how exactly how all of that stirs together, but it does.

I know a lot of you are on the very narrow bridge between hope and disillusionment. This week the bridge seems even narrower, and it takes courage to keep walking. We are in an unstable situation. It takes strength and balance not to fall off. But we have a net below us like we have never had. I no longer believe it’s enough to stand pat, just bank the relationships we have and grow them with interest. Now we will have to take some risks. But the chance of reward has never been greater.

Some of us have to risk a venture into the darkness. We have to go where people misunderstand us, or invite people who misunderstand us or haven’t thought about us, to come and talk with us. Even people who already have biases or stereotypes about us. Tomorrow I have a piece in the Nashua Telegraph inviting people to talk to me, to arrange to come to the synagogue or to invite me to speak somewhere, and any question is on the table, no matter how potentially offensive.

And some of us have to take the final step of the Mishnah, the argument that the Sages make against Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah -- that these stories have to impel us toward messianic days.

I ask myself -- when communities and churches were attacked in other places, why have I and why have we not responded with the kind of concern and love that others have shown to us this week? Where were our songs, our flowers, our offers of food? And truthfully, have we even been there this way when Israelis have been victims of terror?

And I remind us: that as tenacious as anti-Semitism and white supremcism have been, they are at least easy to denounce. But doing so does nothing about even more tenacious problems of poverty, suffering, and injustice in our society. Those can’t be solved by humanizing the other -- that just gets us, barely, to the starting line.

I do not want to feel old and spent, before I understand all of this.

If I am going to be old about these things, I want to be old like one of our oldest members. Where is Shirley?

Shirley is our fourth oldest member -- born in Europe, a person who knows what that world was that she and her family had to leave. She is 94.

When we had our service on Monday evening, with about 100 people, what Shirley wanted to say into the microphone most of all was this: that in the first day, the Muslim community in Pittsburgh took the initiative to raise tens of thousands of dollars to help the Jewish community. This is the same Shirley, who feels every act of anti-Semitism in the world, and every small bigoted insult about Jews where in the complex where she lives, piercing her inside.

I called her over after the service and remarked on that -- that you Shirley contain in yourself the most finely tuned sensitivity and worry about our place in the world as Jews, and also the ability to see generosity and support and possibility in that same world.

Shirley can tell you that this is a difficult place to live, almost unbearable. But that is precisely where we need to be. That’s the message of the Mishnah about Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Ben Zoma, and the Sages. I say, let’s be old like our 94-year-old Shirley, and let’s be young like our newest mitzvah-people, like Lexi and all you B’not and B’nai Mitzvah. You young people already have a head start on these challenges of this world. Pull us with you back toward the idealism we need.

This week we have mourned, and we have looked at the darkness, but we can also tell a story of light, and even see to bringing our world toward messianic days. I will not let the gunman or the supremacists take my faith in America from me. I will be ever grateful for all of you here, for those who are with us, and for those who inspire us.

We will talk more and make plans. Anti-Semitism and white supremacism are violent, and they are largely built on words -- words that trick and deceive, words that bully, words on the web and words between people. We will fight it and we will defeat it with our own words -- words that love, words that encourage, words between people and even words on the web. Words that describe the real world and words that describe the world we dream of.

May God and may this gathering of ours bring some comfort to all those mourning those were killed in Pittsburgh, and may our lives make their memories a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom.

The Elul Love Your Neighbor Study Challenge

Dear Friends:

This Shabbat is the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul, the new moon marking one month before Rosh Hashanah. I want to invite all of you into a challenge with me: the Elul Love Your Neighbor Study Challenge.

Part of the process of teshuvah (returning, redirecting ourselves) is studying what the Torah says about relationships between people and our responsibilities in the world. One of the unique ways the Jewish community can reshape the world in the new year is by bringing into action our teachings about compassion and justice.
 
What better way to start doing both of those things than to study this month a verse that is at the literal center of the Torah: וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ V’ahavta l’ray’acha kamocha “Love your neighbor as yourself”
 
The tradition of Jewish commentary on this phrase, each word within it, and its context in the Torah make clear that this is not some vague and gooey teaching. Rather, it opens up a set of challenges and questions that we have to figure out how to apply in our personal lives and as citizens.
 
The challenge:
I would like to study this verse during the month of Elul, between now and Rosh Hashanah, with at least 75 people. I hope many will be people who don’t already usually study Torah.
 
When and How:
If you are interested in hosting a study salon at your home, or setting up some study time with me for yourself or a small group at the synagogue or another place, contact me as soon as possible! Or, come to one of these ready-made opportunities:
 
Love Your Neighbor Café (coffee, tea, etc are on me!)
Thursday, Aug. 16 10:00-11:00 a.m. A&E Coffee Roasters, 135 Rte 101A, Amherst
Friday, Aug. 17 10:30-11:30 a.m. Buckley’s Bakery and Café, 436 Daniel Webster Hwy, Merrimack
Wednesday, Aug. 22 1:00-2:00 p.m. The Village Bean, 33 Indian Rock Rd (Rte 111), Windham
Tuesday, Aug. 28 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Riverwalk Café, 35 Railroad Square, Nashua
 
Lunch Hour Torah – call in or participate by video through the web
12:00-1:00 p.m. Aug. 14, 22, or 30
Just click https://zoom.us/j/5530075723 or call (929) 436-2866 or (669) 900 6833, use meeting ID 553 007 5723

Beit Midrash In-Depth Study Session – 2 Hours of Torah (With Snacks)
6:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, August 16 and Tuesday, August 28
at Temple Beth Abraham (20 minute interlude for minyan at 7:30 p.m.)
 
I hope this sparks many conversations. I know I will learn a lot through this learning together, about ethics and relationships and even politics, and we will figure out ways to share what we learn. I'll post updates on how far we are toward the surface goal of the challenge, and include a small taste of the topic in my regular Elul e-blasts.

May this be a step toward a Shana Tova Umetukah, a good and sweet New Year!

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov, a good new month,
Rabbi Jon

How to Use and Not Use Biblical Verses in Politics

This was my D'var Torah last Shabbat (June 16, 2018), in response to the back-and-forth between religious groups and Attorney General Jeff Sessions about what the Bible says about the policy of separating parents and children when families are suspected of crossing the U.S. border illegally.

One afternoon a young yeshiva bocher, a student immersed in the study of the tomes of the Sages, was on his break. He was wandering around the Bes Medrash, the library, going from aisle to aisle. Among all the tall and thick rabbinic treatises and commentaries, he came upon a book that was noticeably smaller than all the rest. He took it from the shelf and began paging through, and suddenly his face burst into a smile. The book was a Tanakh -- a Bible. The young yeshiva bocher took the book and sprinted to the study of the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva, and he screamed in excitement:

“Rebbe! You’ll never guess what I found! It’s a book full of quotations from the Talmud!”

This is often how the Bible is used -- it’s subordinate to something else. I’m poking fun at the world of traditional Jewish learning, but we see this too in politics, in political argument. I want to teach you two terms from the Talmud that I bet you’re going to want to start using -- and one is in Aramaic, so you will really sound like you’re in the know to boot. The terms are: מִדְרָשׁ midrash and אַסְמַכְתָא as’mach’ta.

Midrash is a word you may know -- it means inquiring into the meaning of words from Torah, digging into them, trying to figure out what the original words are saying as they apply to a situation today. As’mach’ta means, a prop. It’s the same root as a word you may know from the prayers, סוֹמֵךְ נוֹפְלִים somaych noflim, the one who holds up the fallen. As’mach’ta is when you don’t have a good argument, so you prop up your view with a verse from the Bible. Slapping a verse next to something for decoration. Or as’mach’ta is when you don’t really care whether people pay attention to your real argument -- but there’s a verse that’s related so you tack it on and figure people will pay attention to that.

In the Talmud, the rabbis often bring up biblical verses in the course of discussion, and they ask each other -- is that midrash or as’mach’ta? Is that your argument, are you really asking the verse what it says, or are you just trying to buy the power of a biblical verse without paying for it? The rabbis in the Talmud even have a way of rolling their eyes in writing when sniff out a weak as’mach’ta. You call that an argument? It’s just אַסְמַכְתָא בְּעַלְמָא as’mach’ta b’alma. That’s the yeshiva bocher, who finds a Bible in the house of study and thinks it’s just a book of things rabbis say to decorate an argument they are making.As I say, I’m really talking about the Bible and politics. When you hear the Bible quoted, when is it midrash, when is it really digging in for wisdom, for challenging the world, and when is it just as’mach’ta, a cheap trick to borrow some gravity and power and substance when it’s not really there?

This week we had a battle of the Bible verses, on the subject of immigration and in particular the policy of the United States at the borders of our country, to take children far away from their parents if they arrive illegally. On one side, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions -- and on the other one side, well..... the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a whole bunch of others of us.

This week, at their national convention, the Southern Baptists passed, as they have before, a resolution on immigration reform including the principle of family unity, protesting at about the border. They gave a strong affirmation of the value and dignity of immigrants, making a whether Christian or not, and they issued a call to political leaders and clergy to speak and take action.

They quoted Genesis, Leviticus, and the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, and also the Christian Bible of course.

Attorney General Sessions gave a speech this week in direct response to the Southern Baptists. We should always read the whole speech before reacting, check what’s in the press, make sure they aren’t quoting out of context. His whole speech is in fact on the Department of Justice website already. This is some of what he said, and while it’s not the whole thing I’m not omitting any words in the middle.

“Let me take an aside to discuss concerns raised by our church friends about separating families.Many of the criticisms raised in recent days are not fair or logical and some are contrary to law.

“First- illegal entry into the United States is a crime—as it should be. Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.

“Our policies that can result in short term separation of families is not unusual or unjustified. American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them....”

The attorney general quoted from an epistle of Paul in the Christian Scriptures, but he could have just as easily cited from chapter 29 of Jeremiah, the same Jeremiah the Baptists quoted.

Bible and Bible. I know, I hope, that we’re agreed about the cruelty of this policy; I hope there is one vision here you find more compelling, for a whole lot of reasons. But this is a biblical standoff, and what do we do with that? If one side has their verses and one side has theirs, what do we mean when we say that one side is right, other than -- it’s what I already think, so that’s what right? Is the Bible really adding anything here? It’s very important to me that your response to this isn’t: anyone can just find a verse for anything.I want to give you a way to think about this, and it includes a challenge even if you know this week who you agree with. It’s not about who has the best interpretation of a specific biblical verse. I think the most important way to think about this battle of the Bible verses is: midrash vs. as’mach’ta. Who is really searching the meaning of the verse, and who is just propping up their view with a shiny ornament.

I think of the Bible like the equalizer on a stereo or amp, in your living room or on the stage of an arena. On a good stereo, a good amp there is a series of dials -- from deep bass to high treble -- and each one corresponds to a different part of the sound, and you can adjust each one of them separately. You can silence one completely, or crank it up pretty high.

And the Bible is like that. Every verse in the Bible is like one of the dials on the amplifier of the Divine Voice. The question is: how much are you cranking up the level on each dial? When you are presented with a question of today, a question of policy, what does your whole equalizer look like?

There is one dial that should always be cranked up; it’s the fundamental bass all the time. It’s in Genesis 1, the verse that reads: ‘God created the human being in God’s image.” וַיִבְרָא אֱ-לֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ Vayiv’ra Elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo. When it comes to that dial, to paraphrase Spinal Tap -- ours goes to 11, all the time. If someone is quoting the Bible about a public policy issue and they don’t have that dial cranked up to the maximum -- you should stop listening. You know there is no midrash there, only as’mach’ta.

But after that, every verse has a range of settings that could be appropriate. Even the ones like what the Attorney General quoted. As long as you are thinking about how to set the dials, you are doing midrash -- you are inquiring into the sound of each verse, the setting of each dial. How that verse or that combination of verses, mixed in different ways, vibrates, penetrates your thoughts and grabs your emotions, stimulates your nerves and flexes your muscles into action. It should make you tremble, or move you to a joyful noise.

These past three years in particular, I have been thinking about all kinds of verses relevant to issues of immigration. About ahavat ha-ger, loving the stranger, and its relationship to v’ahavta l’rayacha kamocha, loving the neighbor. The relationship between loving the stranger and not oppressing the stranger, which in different verses are about economics, power, or the words we use. These verse don’t all say the same thing. How high should each one be set? And what about the kinds of verses like the one the Attorney General quoted?

If you never mess with the dials, if you set them once upon a time and never change them, then I don’t care what your view is, you are doing as’mach’ta -- the Torah is just a prop. The verse isn’t really for meaning or argument, it’s not revelation, it’s just plastic decoration.

There are verses that should have a maximum setting, and some that should have a minimum. To me, when it comes to the Bible and public affairs, we always have to remember that every word of the Torah was revealed in opposition to the powers of the world, to people emerging from slavery or to prophets calling kings and leaders to account. So Attorney General Sessions has his settings wrong, in the sense that his verse about orderly government can be more than zero, but it is set too high, and his image of God setting is far too low. And you can tell that for him it’s just as’mach’ta, and not midrash. He doesn’t hear the other verses at all. And even the verses he cites aren’t really where he learned his views about government and law. They are just for effect; the verses aren’t making him tremble.

At the same time, you can’t set your levels just once, to vibrate with one political party or movement. There is “love the stranger”, and there is a minimum that that verse should never be set below. But there are other dials too -- and any party or movement or leader who doesn’t allow you to fiddle with the levels, becomes a power that also has to be critized and corrected. If you zero out every dial but one, if you hear only one verse or just a few verses, and that’s all you want or all you get coming out of your stereo -- even if it’s Tzelem Elohim, the image of God -- then you’ll stop trembling, you won’t be moved to a joyful shout.  Your sound will be tinny, not rich and lush, and that is not midrash. Our political friends too can make our verses no longer resonate, if they turn off all the other dials. Just because we like it doesn’t mean this isn’t also using the Bible as as’mach’ta, a prop, a talisman.

There is right or wrong about the separation of families at the border -- and it’s wrong. But when it comes to how the Bible speaks to that, what I’m listening for is right or wrong and also more -- it’s midrash or as'mach'ta. I believe the religious folks this week are more right than the Attorney General, and partly it’s because they have a richer sound. They bothered to set a bunch of dials, and the Attorney General sounds like he set only one, and he did it once and has never gone back. They did midrash, and he just did as’mach’ta.

Let’s not any of us settle for biblical verses as as’mach’ta, even when we are surely right. We must never get in a position where the citation of a verse from the Bible is ho-hum. The Bible might be the smallest book on the shelf when it comes to public policy -- but it should pulse in a way no other resource does. It should not just inform our policies, but stretch our humanity. When you think you have the truth, that’s when you should check the levels every time, to make sure they are right each time you listen, each time you perform the sounds. That’s what will make the verses of Bible matter. Especially when we’re right about an issue that affects lives, life and death -- especially then, we as Jews, as religious people, should be the ones teaching verses from the Bible as midrash -- making the sound of justice better, sweeter, edgier, richer, so that the voice of the living God vibrates like a revelation, penetrating thoughts and grabbing emotions, stimulating nerves and flexing muscles into action.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

How to Use and Not Use Biblical Verses in Politics

This was my D'var Torah last Shabbat (June 16, 2018), in response to the back-and-forth between religious groups and Attorney General Jeff Sessions about what the Bible says about the policy of separating parents and children when families are suspected of crossing the U.S. border illegally.

One afternoon a young yeshiva bocher, a student immersed in the study of the tomes of the Sages, was on his break. He was wandering around the Bes Medrash, the library, going from aisle to aisle. Among all the tall and thick rabbinic treatises and commentaries, he came upon a book that was noticeably smaller than all the rest. He took it from the shelf and began paging through, and suddenly his face burst into a smile. The book was a Tanakh -- a Bible. The young yeshiva bocher took the book and sprinted to the study of the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva, and he screamed in excitement:

“Rebbe! You’ll never guess what I found! It’s a book full of quotations from the Talmud!”

This is often how the Bible is used -- it’s subordinate to something else. I’m poking fun at the world of traditional Jewish learning, but we see this too in politics, in political argument. I want to teach you two terms from the Talmud that I bet you’re going to want to start using -- and one is in Aramaic, so you will really sound like you’re in the know to boot. The terms are: מִדְרָשׁ midrash and אַסְמַכְתָא as’mach’ta.

Midrash is a word you may know -- it means inquiring into the meaning of words from Torah, digging into them, trying to figure out what the original words are saying as they apply to a situation today. As’mach’ta means, a prop. It’s the same root as a word you may know from the prayers, סוֹמֵךְ נוֹפְלִים somaych noflim, the one who holds up the fallen. As’mach’ta is when you don’t have a good argument, so you prop up your view with a verse from the Bible. Slapping a verse next to something for decoration. Or as’mach’ta is when you don’t really care whether people pay attention to your real argument -- but there’s a verse that’s related so you tack it on and figure people will pay attention to that.

In the Talmud, the rabbis often bring up biblical verses in the course of discussion, and they ask each other -- is that midrash or as’mach’ta? Is that your argument, are you really asking the verse what it says, or are you just trying to buy the power of a biblical verse without paying for it? The rabbis in the Talmud even have a way of rolling their eyes in writing when sniff out a weak as’mach’ta. You call that an argument? It’s just אַסְמַכְתָא בְּעַלְמָא as’mach’ta b’alma. That’s the yeshiva bocher, who finds a Bible in the house of study and thinks it’s just a book of things rabbis say to decorate an argument they are making.As I say, I’m really talking about the Bible and politics. When you hear the Bible quoted, when is it midrash, when is it really digging in for wisdom, for challenging the world, and when is it just as’mach’ta, a cheap trick to borrow some gravity and power and substance when it’s not really there?

This week we had a battle of the Bible verses, on the subject of immigration and in particular the policy of the United States at the borders of our country, to take children far away from their parents if they arrive illegally. On one side, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions -- and on the other one side, well..... the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a whole bunch of others of us.

This week, at their national convention, the Southern Baptists passed, as they have before, a resolution on immigration reform including the principle of family unity, protesting at about the border. They gave a strong affirmation of the value and dignity of immigrants, making a whether Christian or not, and they issued a call to political leaders and clergy to speak and take action.

They quoted Genesis, Leviticus, and the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, and also the Christian Bible of course.

Attorney General Sessions gave a speech this week in direct response to the Southern Baptists. We should always read the whole speech before reacting, check what’s in the press, make sure they aren’t quoting out of context. His whole speech is in fact on the Department of Justice website already. This is some of what he said, and while it’s not the whole thing I’m not omitting any words in the middle.

“Let me take an aside to discuss concerns raised by our church friends about separating families.Many of the criticisms raised in recent days are not fair or logical and some are contrary to law.

“First- illegal entry into the United States is a crime—as it should be. Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.

“Our policies that can result in short term separation of families is not unusual or unjustified. American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them....”

The attorney general quoted from an epistle of Paul in the Christian Scriptures, but he could have just as easily cited from chapter 29 of Jeremiah, the same Jeremiah the Baptists quoted.

Bible and Bible. I know, I hope, that we’re agreed about the cruelty of this policy; I hope there is one vision here you find more compelling, for a whole lot of reasons. But this is a biblical standoff, and what do we do with that? If one side has their verses and one side has theirs, what do we mean when we say that one side is right, other than -- it’s what I already think, so that’s what right? Is the Bible really adding anything here? It’s very important to me that your response to this isn’t: anyone can just find a verse for anything.I want to give you a way to think about this, and it includes a challenge even if you know this week who you agree with. It’s not about who has the best interpretation of a specific biblical verse. I think the most important way to think about this battle of the Bible verses is: midrash vs. as’mach’ta. Who is really searching the meaning of the verse, and who is just propping up their view with a shiny ornament.

I think of the Bible like the equalizer on a stereo or amp, in your living room or on the stage of an arena. On a good stereo, a good amp there is a series of dials -- from deep bass to high treble -- and each one corresponds to a different part of the sound, and you can adjust each one of them separately. You can silence one completely, or crank it up pretty high.

And the Bible is like that. Every verse in the Bible is like one of the dials on the amplifier of the Divine Voice. The question is: how much are you cranking up the level on each dial? When you are presented with a question of today, a question of policy, what does your whole equalizer look like?

There is one dial that should always be cranked up; it’s the fundamental bass all the time. It’s in Genesis 1, the verse that reads: ‘God created the human being in God’s image.” וַיִבְרָא אֱ-לֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ Vayiv’ra Elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo. When it comes to that dial, to paraphrase Spinal Tap -- ours goes to 11, all the time. If someone is quoting the Bible about a public policy issue and they don’t have that dial cranked up to the maximum -- you should stop listening. You know there is no midrash there, only as’mach’ta.

But after that, every verse has a range of settings that could be appropriate. Even the ones like what the Attorney General quoted. As long as you are thinking about how to set the dials, you are doing midrash -- you are inquiring into the sound of each verse, the setting of each dial. How that verse or that combination of verses, mixed in different ways, vibrates, penetrates your thoughts and grabs your emotions, stimulates your nerves and flexes your muscles into action. It should make you tremble, or move you to a joyful noise.

These past three years in particular, I have been thinking about all kinds of verses relevant to issues of immigration. About ahavat ha-ger, loving the stranger, and its relationship to v’ahavta l’rayacha kamocha, loving the neighbor. The relationship between loving the stranger and not oppressing the stranger, which in different verses are about economics, power, or the words we use. These verse don’t all say the same thing. How high should each one be set? And what about the kinds of verses like the one the Attorney General quoted?

If you never mess with the dials, if you set them once upon a time and never change them, then I don’t care what your view is, you are doing as’mach’ta -- the Torah is just a prop. The verse isn’t really for meaning or argument, it’s not revelation, it’s just plastic decoration.

There are verses that should have a maximum setting, and some that should have a minimum. To me, when it comes to the Bible and public affairs, we always have to remember that every word of the Torah was revealed in opposition to the powers of the world, to people emerging from slavery or to prophets calling kings and leaders to account. So Attorney General Sessions has his settings wrong, in the sense that his verse about orderly government can be more than zero, but it is set too high, and his image of God setting is far too low. And you can tell that for him it’s just as’mach’ta, and not midrash. He doesn’t hear the other verses at all. And even the verses he cites aren’t really where he learned his views about government and law. They are just for effect; the verses aren’t making him tremble.

At the same time, you can’t set your levels just once, to vibrate with one political party or movement. There is “love the stranger”, and there is a minimum that that verse should never be set below. But there are other dials too -- and any party or movement or leader who doesn’t allow you to fiddle with the levels, becomes a power that also has to be critized and corrected. If you zero out every dial but one, if you hear only one verse or just a few verses, and that’s all you want or all you get coming out of your stereo -- even if it’s Tzelem Elohim, the image of God -- then you’ll stop trembling, you won’t be moved to a joyful shout.  Your sound will be tinny, not rich and lush, and that is not midrash. Our political friends too can make our verses no longer resonate, if they turn off all the other dials. Just because we like it doesn’t mean this isn’t also using the Bible as as’mach’ta, a prop, a talisman.

There is right or wrong about the separation of families at the border -- and it’s wrong. But when it comes to how the Bible speaks to that, what I’m listening for is right or wrong and also more -- it’s midrash or as'mach'ta. I believe the religious folks this week are more right than the Attorney General, and partly it’s because they have a richer sound. They bothered to set a bunch of dials, and the Attorney General sounds like he set only one, and he did it once and has never gone back. They did midrash, and he just did as’mach’ta.

Let’s not any of us settle for biblical verses as as’mach’ta, even when we are surely right. We must never get in a position where the citation of a verse from the Bible is ho-hum. The Bible might be the smallest book on the shelf when it comes to public policy -- but it should pulse in a way no other resource does. It should not just inform our policies, but stretch our humanity. When you think you have the truth, that’s when you should check the levels every time, to make sure they are right each time you listen, each time you perform the sounds. That’s what will make the verses of Bible matter. Especially when we’re right about an issue that affects lives, life and death -- especially then, we as Jews, as religious people, should be the ones teaching verses from the Bible as midrash -- making the sound of justice better, sweeter, edgier, richer, so that the voice of the living God vibrates like a revelation, penetrating thoughts and grabbing emotions, stimulating nerves and flexing muscles into action.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

How to Use and Not Use Biblical Verses in Politics

This was my D'var Torah last Shabbat (June 16, 2018), in response to the back-and-forth between religious groups and Attorney General Jeff Sessions about what the Bible says about the policy of separating parents and children when families are suspected of crossing the U.S. border illegally.

One afternoon a young yeshiva bocher, a student immersed in the study of the tomes of the Sages, was on his break. He was wandering around the Bes Medrash, the library, going from aisle to aisle. Among all the tall and thick rabbinic treatises and commentaries, he came upon a book that was noticeably smaller than all the rest. He took it from the shelf and began paging through, and suddenly his face burst into a smile. The book was a Tanakh -- a Bible. The young yeshiva bocher took the book and sprinted to the study of the Rosh Yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva, and he screamed in excitement:

“Rebbe! You’ll never guess what I found! It’s a book full of quotations from the Talmud!”

This is often how the Bible is used -- it’s subordinate to something else. I’m poking fun at the world of traditional Jewish learning, but we see this too in politics, in political argument. I want to teach you two terms from the Talmud that I bet you’re going to want to start using -- and one is in Aramaic, so you will really sound like you’re in the know to boot. The terms are: מִדְרָשׁ midrash and אַסְמַכְתָא as’mach’ta.

Midrash is a word you may know -- it means inquiring into the meaning of words from Torah, digging into them, trying to figure out what the original words are saying as they apply to a situation today. As’mach’ta means, a prop. It’s the same root as a word you may know from the prayers, סוֹמֵךְ נוֹפְלִים somaych noflim, the one who holds up the fallen. As’mach’ta is when you don’t have a good argument, so you prop up your view with a verse from the Bible. Slapping a verse next to something for decoration. Or as’mach’ta is when you don’t really care whether people pay attention to your real argument -- but there’s a verse that’s related so you tack it on and figure people will pay attention to that.

In the Talmud, the rabbis often bring up biblical verses in the course of discussion, and they ask each other -- is that midrash or as’mach’ta? Is that your argument, are you really asking the verse what it says, or are you just trying to buy the power of a biblical verse without paying for it? The rabbis in the Talmud even have a way of rolling their eyes in writing when sniff out a weak as’mach’ta. You call that an argument? It’s just אַסְמַכְתָא בְּעַלְמָא as’mach’ta b’alma. That’s the yeshiva bocher, who finds a Bible in the house of study and thinks it’s just a book of things rabbis say to decorate an argument they are making.As I say, I’m really talking about the Bible and politics. When you hear the Bible quoted, when is it midrash, when is it really digging in for wisdom, for challenging the world, and when is it just as’mach’ta, a cheap trick to borrow some gravity and power and substance when it’s not really there?

This week we had a battle of the Bible verses, on the subject of immigration and in particular the policy of the United States at the borders of our country, to take children far away from their parents if they arrive illegally. On one side, the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions -- and on the other one side, well..... the Southern Baptist Convention and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a whole bunch of others of us.

This week, at their national convention, the Southern Baptists passed, as they have before, a resolution on immigration reform including the principle of family unity, protesting at about the border. They gave a strong affirmation of the value and dignity of immigrants, making a whether Christian or not, and they issued a call to political leaders and clergy to speak and take action.

They quoted Genesis, Leviticus, and the prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, and also the Christian Bible of course.

Attorney General Sessions gave a speech this week in direct response to the Southern Baptists. We should always read the whole speech before reacting, check what’s in the press, make sure they aren’t quoting out of context. His whole speech is in fact on the Department of Justice website already. This is some of what he said, and while it’s not the whole thing I’m not omitting any words in the middle.

“Let me take an aside to discuss concerns raised by our church friends about separating families.Many of the criticisms raised in recent days are not fair or logical and some are contrary to law.

“First- illegal entry into the United States is a crime—as it should be. Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.

“Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.

“Our policies that can result in short term separation of families is not unusual or unjustified. American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them....”

The attorney general quoted from an epistle of Paul in the Christian Scriptures, but he could have just as easily cited from chapter 29 of Jeremiah, the same Jeremiah the Baptists quoted.

Bible and Bible. I know, I hope, that we’re agreed about the cruelty of this policy; I hope there is one vision here you find more compelling, for a whole lot of reasons. But this is a biblical standoff, and what do we do with that? If one side has their verses and one side has theirs, what do we mean when we say that one side is right, other than -- it’s what I already think, so that’s what right? Is the Bible really adding anything here? It’s very important to me that your response to this isn’t: anyone can just find a verse for anything.I want to give you a way to think about this, and it includes a challenge even if you know this week who you agree with. It’s not about who has the best interpretation of a specific biblical verse. I think the most important way to think about this battle of the Bible verses is: midrash vs. as’mach’ta. Who is really searching the meaning of the verse, and who is just propping up their view with a shiny ornament.

I think of the Bible like the equalizer on a stereo or amp, in your living room or on the stage of an arena. On a good stereo, a good amp there is a series of dials -- from deep bass to high treble -- and each one corresponds to a different part of the sound, and you can adjust each one of them separately. You can silence one completely, or crank it up pretty high.

And the Bible is like that. Every verse in the Bible is like one of the dials on the amplifier of the Divine Voice. The question is: how much are you cranking up the level on each dial? When you are presented with a question of today, a question of policy, what does your whole equalizer look like?

There is one dial that should always be cranked up; it’s the fundamental bass all the time. It’s in Genesis 1, the verse that reads: ‘God created the human being in God’s image.” וַיִבְרָא אֱ-לֹהִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ Vayiv’ra Elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo. When it comes to that dial, to paraphrase Spinal Tap -- ours goes to 11, all the time. If someone is quoting the Bible about a public policy issue and they don’t have that dial cranked up to the maximum -- you should stop listening. You know there is no midrash there, only as’mach’ta.

But after that, every verse has a range of settings that could be appropriate. Even the ones like what the Attorney General quoted. As long as you are thinking about how to set the dials, you are doing midrash -- you are inquiring into the sound of each verse, the setting of each dial. How that verse or that combination of verses, mixed in different ways, vibrates, penetrates your thoughts and grabs your emotions, stimulates your nerves and flexes your muscles into action. It should make you tremble, or move you to a joyful noise.

These past three years in particular, I have been thinking about all kinds of verses relevant to issues of immigration. About ahavat ha-ger, loving the stranger, and its relationship to v’ahavta l’rayacha kamocha, loving the neighbor. The relationship between loving the stranger and not oppressing the stranger, which in different verses are about economics, power, or the words we use. These verse don’t all say the same thing. How high should each one be set? And what about the kinds of verses like the one the Attorney General quoted?

If you never mess with the dials, if you set them once upon a time and never change them, then I don’t care what your view is, you are doing as’mach’ta -- the Torah is just a prop. The verse isn’t really for meaning or argument, it’s not revelation, it’s just plastic decoration.

There are verses that should have a maximum setting, and some that should have a minimum. To me, when it comes to the Bible and public affairs, we always have to remember that every word of the Torah was revealed in opposition to the powers of the world, to people emerging from slavery or to prophets calling kings and leaders to account. So Attorney General Sessions has his settings wrong, in the sense that his verse about orderly government can be more than zero, but it is set too high, and his image of God setting is far too low. And you can tell that for him it’s just as’mach’ta, and not midrash. He doesn’t hear the other verses at all. And even the verses he cites aren’t really where he learned his views about government and law. They are just for effect; the verses aren’t making him tremble.

At the same time, you can’t set your levels just once, to vibrate with one political party or movement. There is “love the stranger”, and there is a minimum that that verse should never be set below. But there are other dials too -- and any party or movement or leader who doesn’t allow you to fiddle with the levels, becomes a power that also has to be critized and corrected. If you zero out every dial but one, if you hear only one verse or just a few verses, and that’s all you want or all you get coming out of your stereo -- even if it’s Tzelem Elohim, the image of God -- then you’ll stop trembling, you won’t be moved to a joyful shout.  Your sound will be tinny, not rich and lush, and that is not midrash. Our political friends too can make our verses no longer resonate, if they turn off all the other dials. Just because we like it doesn’t mean this isn’t also using the Bible as as’mach’ta, a prop, a talisman.

There is right or wrong about the separation of families at the border -- and it’s wrong. But when it comes to how the Bible speaks to that, what I’m listening for is right or wrong and also more -- it’s midrash or as'mach'ta. I believe the religious folks this week are more right than the Attorney General, and partly it’s because they have a richer sound. They bothered to set a bunch of dials, and the Attorney General sounds like he set only one, and he did it once and has never gone back. They did midrash, and he just did as’mach’ta.

Let’s not any of us settle for biblical verses as as’mach’ta, even when we are surely right. We must never get in a position where the citation of a verse from the Bible is ho-hum. The Bible might be the smallest book on the shelf when it comes to public policy -- but it should pulse in a way no other resource does. It should not just inform our policies, but stretch our humanity. When you think you have the truth, that’s when you should check the levels every time, to make sure they are right each time you listen, each time you perform the sounds. That’s what will make the verses of Bible matter. Especially when we’re right about an issue that affects lives, life and death -- especially then, we as Jews, as religious people, should be the ones teaching verses from the Bible as midrash -- making the sound of justice better, sweeter, edgier, richer, so that the voice of the living God vibrates like a revelation, penetrating thoughts and grabbing emotions, stimulating nerves and flexing muscles into action.

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Bring Philip Roth to Shul Day

This was my Dvar Torah on May 26, for Parashat Naso.

I know one person, and maybe only one, who would have loved the beginning of this Torah reading – Philip Roth, the great American Jewish author who died this week at the age of 85. He was not really a Torah person, but the scenario about a jealous husband suspicious of his wife would have been right up his alley. And the best part for Roth might have been where the Kohen writes down a curse with the name of God and dissolves it into bitter water. The one time that we are actually commanded to erase God’s name, which is one of the blasphemies of the Torah! Philip Roth, may his memory be for a blessing, was insistently anti-religious and was called blasphemous plenty of times, from plenty of pulpits. His characters were often Jewish but he fought against being called a Jewish writer. He might have just loved that opening passage -- and I’m just as sure he would hate the idea that rabbis would make him the subject of a sermon in the synagogue.

In recent years a lot of Jews like us reclaimed Philip Roth, or felt he had come back to us, after his novel The Plot Against America in 2004, in which he imagined the anti-Semite Charles Lindberg becoming president at the time of World War II. But I’d like to go back to the beginning of his career, to story from 1958. When Roth was 25 years old, he published a wicked funny and wickedly funny short story in the Paris Review called “The Conversion of the Jews.” The following year it was published with a few others at the end of his first novel, Goodbye Columbus.

It’s set in a fifth- or sixth-grade yeshivah class, where one of the boys, Ozzie Freedman, loves to pester Rabbi Marvin Binder with questions. All the other boys, like his good friend Itzie Lieberman, just want to keep quiet and laugh and make faces and obscene gestures behind the rabbi’s back. But Ozzie asks questions. Like why the rabbi can call the Jews “The Chosen People” if the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal. And why, when a plane crashed at LaGuardia and 58 people died, the fact that eight of them were Jewish made it a tragedy. Mrs. Freedman had already been called in to speak to Rabbi Binder because of those two questions. The rabbi had answers, but Ozzie kept saying, “I’m asking something different.”

Now for a third time Mrs. Freedman has to come in, and this is why. For some reason Rabbi Binder was talking about Jesus in class – the rabbi brought it up, Ozzie says -- and how Jesus was a historical person and not God. And Ozzie tells Itzie how he asked, after a very dramatic introduction about God’s powers of creation: “Anyway, I asked Binder if He could make all that in six days, and He could pick the six days He wanted right out of nowhere” --  why God couldn’t make a woman have a baby without a human father.

Itzie, his friend, is more interested in the sex part of the question. Maybe Rabbi Binder is upset about both. Anyway, Rabbi Binder reiterated that Jesus is not God, and Ozzie explains to his friend, “I understood that. What I wanted to know was different.”

It happens on a Friday, and Ozzie is going to tell his mother about what happened and why she was going to be summoned again. It’s just the two of them, his father is no longer living, and first Mrs. Freedman lights the Shabbat candles. I just love Roth’s description of how she appeared to Ozzie: “When his mother lit candles she would move her arms slowly towards her, dragging them through the air, as though persuading people whose minds were half made up. And her eyes would get glassy with tears… Even when she was dressed up she didn’t look like a chosen person. But when she lit candles she looked like something better; like a woman who knew momentarily that God could do anything.”

But when Ozzie finally fesses up, his mother smacks him in the face, the first time she’s ever done that.

The following Wednesday arrives, the day of the meeting with the rabbi and Ozzie’s mother. There is some time at the end of the class day, so Rabbi Binder says there will be open discussion on any question. No one has any questions, and Ozzie doesn’t want to say another word. But Rabbi Binder makes him stand up and ask a question. Ozzie finally screams out another version of his question about God. The rabbi flips out, so does Ozzie, and eventually Ozzie runs out of the classroom and onto the roof and he locks the door behind him.

All the kids run outside the building, the firemen are called, and Ozzie’s mother too. Ozzie threatens to jump, and makes the firemen with their net chase as he trots from one side of the roof to another. One of my favorite characters in the story is the custodian or caretaker, Yokov Blotnik, who is capable of only two ways of evaluating any situation – good-for-the-Jews and no-good-for-the-Jews. That’s with hyphens – good-for-the-Jews, no-good-for-the-Jews. Ozzie’s mother pleads with him to come down from the roof: “Don’t be a martyr.” But his friend Itzie yells up to the roof, “Gawhead, be a Martin!” And all the boys begin to chant, “Be a Martin! Be a Martin!”

Eventually, Ozzie says that he will come down safely if Rabbi Binder says in front of everyone that God can make anything. And then he has to say that God could have made Jesus, and then he makes everyone bow on the ground and say it. He makes his mother promise that she will never hit anybody about God – probably the truest thing anyone in the whole story says -- and everyone repeats that too. And he jumps down – safely, we think, “right into the center of the yellow net that glowed…like an overgrown halo.”

I think everyone who teaches Hebrew School should have to read this story every year.

Anyway, what kind of a story is “The Conversion of the Jews”? Maybe it’s just plain satire; maybe it’s just a great example of in a Jewish tradition making fun of cheders and befuddled rabbis. Maybe Ozzie Freedman is just an annoying pisher, a nudnik who happens to be clever. Maybe Philip Roth wasn’t yet one of the greatest authors in America, but a 25-year-old kid with an audience, horsing around.

But one of Philip Roth’s themes was about writing itself, and how authors were constantly facing audiences who came up with their own sometimes-crazy theories of what the author had in mind. That was one of his favorite subjects.

So Philip Roth said he wasn’t a Jewish writer, not interested in Jewish questions… well, bigshot author, may your memory be for a blessing, I’m bringing you to shul, and this is why.

Because this one short story has all the characters we are still grappling with six decades on:

The one who can only think in terms of good-for-the-Jews or no-good-for-the-Jews.

The one, the poor rabbi, who is trying to wrap his head around America and the Christian majority, and who is smart and wants to be relevant, but just can’t keep up with these kids who are more American than he is.

The kids in the story represent two incredibly important types of American Jews. The one who has all the right questions about being Jewish in America, and thinks there must be a good answer, a good Jewish answer, but can’t find anyone who knows how give it to him.

The group, who are probably the most classic Philip Roth-y, who are just living in the moment and in the physical, in the body.

That’s four sons, Seder style, and Roth does it for laughs. (I’m not sure what to do with the mother – a feminist writer, he was not.)

There is no chacham in the story, no upstanding and coherent wise man in sight. Roth’s critique of religion was summed up by my friend and critic Stephen Hazzan Arnoff: “Roth desires to shove traditional answers about ethereal questions aside because of their perceived attachments to religious absurdity, oppression, or boredom.”

That’s what the kids in the story hate – absurdity, oppression, and boredom. Ozzie thinks his rabbi is absurd and oppressive. Itzie and the others think he is oppressive and boring. And we know that for a whole generation or two of Jews in America, when Philip Roth was becoming a great writer, that was the problem with our synagogues and with our neighbors’ churches. And by the time we religious leaders got wise to it, by the time we were trying to respond, a lot of people were…. asking something different.

Roth is important in the synagogue because he represents both the wicked child of the Seder, and a new one, the one who has no interest anymore in asking. So religious Jews and rabbis hated him, or ignored him back, for a long time.

But I think we should honor Philip Roth in shul during his shiva, and give him his due for holding up a mirror to us shul people. For laughing at us and making us laugh at ourselves, if we’re smart enough to do that. In one hand, we need to be carrying Heschel, who was writing at the exact same time and scolding us for the exact same reasons and lecturing us to change before it’s too late. In the other, Philip Roth, laughing at us.

We should honor Philip Roth for reminding us that hearing his questions is not the same as giving a satisfying answer.

And as we remember Philip Roth, we have to give him his due as a Jewish artist of American individuality. He didn’t claim to be anyone’s leader, to give an answer to anything. He was a writer, accountable only to his individual voice. We ought to remember -- we who want people to come to synagogues -- that each Jew out there is an individual, observing and writing and creative about their lives. And we won’t know anything until we read all their stories the way they write them, in their own distinctive and beautiful way. Even when they make fun of us. Even when they point out what seems absurd, oppressive, or boring. If we’re going to offer an answer, we’re going to have to do it at Philip Roth’s level -- just as beautiful, just as interesting, and just as funny.

For Our Lives

My D'var Torah on March 24, 2018, the day of the national "March for Our Lives" after the Parkland school shooting.

Somewhere in America, for fifteen years a fifth-grade teacher used to conclude the week on Friday the same way. She would ask her students to write down the names of four children they’d like to sit with the following week, and to nominate one student as an “exceptional classroom citizen” for the week.

The point of this exercise was not to make the next week’s seating chart. Nor was it to decide who was that week’s exceptional classroom citizen. Instead, this teacher would go home on Friday afternoon and read all the slips of paper. She would ask herself:

• Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
• Who doesn’t even know who to request?
• Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
• Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

The fifteen years of this practice for this teacher began on Friday, April 23, 1999. The Friday following the murders at Columbine High School.

I know about this teacher because someone surfaced an article about her a few weeks ago, after Parkland. The article is entitled, “This Brilliant Math Teacher Has a Formula to Save Kids’ Lives”, and I believe it.

The article was written by a parent of one of the students in that class, a writer named Glennon Doyle Melton with a blog called “Momastery.” She’s the author of books like Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed. So she’s the kind of writer who can totally say that this teacher is a “Love Ninja.... It’s like taking an X-ray of the classroom.”

Her child’s teacher was looking for who is connected and who is not, who is suffering from suddenly being disconnected -- who is bullying others and who is being bullied. She created her Friday practice to save lives. The lives of those potentially killed by school shooters, the lives of those potential shooters, and of course the lives of all those who might be in danger of depression, suicide, turning to substances.

Today a lot of people aren’t at shul because of the March for Our Lives. In the words of the organizers, it’s “kids and families...demand[ing] that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today.”

The weeks since the Parkland shooting have surfaced those feelings and perceptions -- that teens, and not just teens but a lot of younger kids, and parents, are not being heard when they talk about not feeling safe, not having their lives valued or the lives of their children valued. I think this is about gun violence and more. Whether it’s these March marches or #metoo, 5778 has been a year when people are working on both the obvious and concrete level -- about guns and law enforcement -- and the deeper levels, about isolation and about relationships going awry. Lives are at stake, because of guns but a lot more as well.

Here are three things I know:

*In high schools in Greater Nashua and all over New Hampshire, in 2015 more than 1 in 4 kids reported feeling helpless for at least two straight weeks in the past year. Which is, believe it or not, below the national average of 30%.

*In high schools in Greater Nashua and all over New Hampshire, in 2015 4 out of 5 kids said they would not talk to their parents about negative emotions. (Note -- these two facts are from the 2017 Greater Nashua Community Health Assessment)

* If there is a common thread among school shooters in particular, it is that they tend to talk to friends and sometimes teachers and tell them that they are depressed, thinking about suicide, thinking about killing other people. (Cited here on fivethirtyeight.com)

Those three things are in the data. Which means that there are so many opportunities not just to find the person so late in the process, thinking about committing an act of violence, but also those who are vulnerable in other ways, or just starting to be vulnerable.

According to the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (3:14), Rabbi Akiva used to say: Beloved is every human being, who was created in the image of God -- chaviv adam she-nivra b’tzelem. It is an even greater love that it was made known to her, to him, that she was created, that he was created, in the image of God -- chibbah y’teirah noda’at lo she-nivra b’tzelem.

That’s the brilliance of the fifth grade teacher with her Friday slips of paper. We all know, we all say, that every child is precious. But does every child know that someone thinks that about her, about him? Does every child -- or for that matter, every person -- know that someone is thinking about him, interested in her, concerned?

I have been thinking about how to be that teacher. I have here a list I printed of all the teenagers in our community, who have passed through here, currently ages 12-19. How many do you think there are? .... It’s about 150.

I know things about a lot of them. But they don’t all know that I do, or that I bothered to make this list. 

I know that some are happy and some are not; some are connected and some are not. Some are doing well in school, some are not in school. Some are working and some are in college and some are doing neither. Some are lonely and some are popular, and some are both.

I don’t what kind of week more than a few of them have had. My fantasy is to call all of them, or all their parents. But of course that’s not possible.

But what is possible is for us, collectively, to see these 150 as the image of God, and to let them know that they are. And I don’t mean just to value them to the extent they have accomplishments, whether it’s on the bimah or on sports fields or on performance stages. To value them for why they care about what they care about, even if it seems quirky or random. To value them for the mystery each one presents. To enjoy them, even when they are quiet.

It’s possible, especially for someone who is not your child -- to help them know that you know they are the image of God.

I say all the time that what we do here, in the synagogue on Shabbat, makes a difference out in the world, an ethical difference and even a civic difference. This is one of those things where it’s true in a very concrete sense. Do you want to reduce youth violence or bullying or suicide in America? Value a child or a teen in this community.

Because it’s been shown that, in the words of one study on development, “The single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult.”

Imagine if our community was a big version of that one fifth grade teacher. Imagine if that’s what this list meant to us, collectively, every week on Friday before Shabbat.

When the marchers talk about about kids’ and families’ lives and safety, we should understand that they are talking about more than heading off the shooter who might harm someone. They mean, even if they don’t know it, that we should care about their lives and safety all the time in all kinds of ways.

We will never do this well enough, and even with all the fifth-grade teachers and model communities, there is the who-knows reality of the world -- which is why we also have to do everything possible to keep dangerous weapons out of anyone’s hands. We have to make it easier and more standard for teachers or counselors or law enforcement to share information and do something when they learn of a potentially violent person. They are understaffed and overworked, and probably undertrained. We citizens have to let them know that we regard this aspect of their work as not just din but also rachamim -- not just enforcing and following rules, but an aspect of compassion for each person they flag and each person they protect.

Beloved is every human being, who was created in the image of God. It is an even greater love that it was made known to her, to him, that she was created, that he was created, in the image of God.

That’s what it means to be a caring and nurturing community. That’s what it means to be like blogger Glennon Melton, a warrior living unarmed. May we make all our children know what we know, that they are created in the image of God.

Shabbat Shalom.

Reverend King and the Rabbis -- Fifty Years Later

My D'var Torah of April 7, 2018:

Fifty years ago last month, ten days before he was assassinated, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., appeared before the national convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, the annual gathering of Conservative rabbis. It turned out to be Rev. King’s last interview. He was greeted, for the first time in his life he said, by the singing of “We Shall Overcome” in Hebrew -- Anu nitgaber. Deep in my heart, I do believe -- the rabbis sang: Ani ma’amin be’emunah shlaymah, nitgaber b’vo hayom.

Rev. King was introduced by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Indeed, he was supposed to be just a few weeks later at Heschel’s house for the Seder. Questions had been gathered from the convention, and they were presented to Rev. King by Rabbi Everett Gendler, who had been the catalyst for Heschel’s own now-famous participation in the Selma march five years earlier. Listen to what the questions were about:

• the president of the United States
• extremist vs. more moderate approaches to social change, and which do Blacks support on the whole
• what integration really would look like, politically and economically
• the relationship between racism and poverty
• anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric in the Black community
• and finally -- what one thing would Rev. King most want the rabbis and their communities to do right now, beyond what they called “simple tutoring and palliative efforts”

Fifty years after Rev. King was taken from us, and we are still asking the same questions.

I don’t think that in and of itself means that we are stuck in the same place, that we have not moved in fifty years. As the arc of history moves toward justice, in fits and starts and slides backward, there are always certain running themes, questions of values and basic truths about society and ethics, and we should keep asking them, return to them. That’s what our weekly Shabbat gatherings are for -- to figure out the timeless questions beneath the news of the week, so we can ask them and apply some answers in the week to come.

But there is no question that a great leader and a great religious teacher was stolen from us in Memphis fifty years ago, at the age of 39. I call him Rev. King and not Dr. King because he was a teacher about the prophets and the ethics of the Bible to Jews as well as Christians. His core teachings are important to share, to label and present on many occasions. They have depth and they have significance because he was not only steeped in faith, steeped in the prophets, but also steeped in the detail work of a movement and of politics. So Rev. King’s Torah is a kind of steel sharpened and polished not like the Talmud envisions by argument among scholars, but by the test of the world and its Pharaohs.

The Rev. King who spoke to the Rabbinical Assembly fifty years ago was sober and somber, more so than the King who spoke at the Lincoln Memorial so famously. Where 1963 was a year of protest and demonstrations, organized by a pretty united civil rights leadership -- 1968 was a year with violence and riots, controlled by factions or by no one. There was no talk of dreams before the Rabbinical Assembly that day; the goal was harder to see in a single focus. But the enduring truth of the man and the consistency of his teachings were still there, and I want to tell you what we should be learning right now from that Rev. King.

There was a quote from the prophets that he frequently invoked, from the book of Amos: “Let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (5:34). It’s not just beautiful poetry, or just one of any number of exhortations to justice and righteousness in the Bible.

To the ancient Israelites and their prophets, water could be one of two things. It could be rain, scarce and inconsistent, whose every drop had to be caught and channeled, or gathered in cisterns, in a hard fight against nature. Or it could be a never-stopping river, fed from the mountains or from deep within the earth; or the waves of the vast sea -- the most natural and easy and dependable thing in the world.

Some people believe that justice is against human nature and the nature of society. Plenty of people and plenty of thinkers. Rev. King believed that justice and righteousness were built into the world, that in the nature of things they simply flow and gush as simply as gravity, rush into every corner to give it life. That’s a proclamation of faith. That’s not a description of a reality -- it was the opposite of the reality he was fighting against. But Rev King’s fundamental lesson was that justice simply is the true nature of the world, no matter what we see. It takes a deep faith to hold onto that, it took a deep faith for him to hold onto that despite all he had experienced and seen.

And these same words of Amos were also his view of power -- that there is a natural power of justice that cannot be matched by any opponent or any earthly power.

This verse, in fact, comes at the end of a passage in which Amos describes the hard work that oppressors have to do, the labor they have to go through to twist justice, to feast on bribes, to look away from the poor and drive them out from their communities. And the hard work that it takes to present yourself as religious before God, bringing sacrifices and organizing celebrations, when you are the author of so much injustice. Amos is saying: this is unnatural. The power it takes to do these things is a wearying power, a deadening power, a power that spends itself and takes us away from each other and away from the divine.

“Let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Rev. King was teaching us about power. First of all, we need to think in terms of power, of acting powerfully and creating real power, because righteousness needs to feel and to be experienced like a mighty stream. Power is not a dirty word. He asked us to believe in the power available to those who will be just and link arms together, to roll ahead and stream forward mightily.

In front of the rabbis that day, Rev. King talked about the upcoming Poor People’s March, and talked about power:

I can’t see the answer in riots. On the other hand, I can’t see the answer in tender supplications for justice. I see the answer in an alternative to both of these, and that is militant non-violence that is massive enough, that is attention-getting enough to dramatize the problems, that will be as attention-getting as a riot... And this is what we hope to do in Washington through our movement.

And he pointed out to the rabbis their power, the prophetic power of their pulpits:

...the religious community, being the chief moral guardian of the over-all community should really take the primary responsibility in dealing with this problem of racism, which is largely attitudinal.

It is time for us to claim this power that we have, as religious leaders and religious people. This should be the easiest kind of power, the power of our speech and the clarity of words that distinguish what it just from what is unjust.

In front of the rabbis, Rev. King was in one of the toughest times of his life and his work. He was embattled within his community, and it was an angry time and a fearful time. And Rev. King can teach us something about anger and fear. And I think again that it was the prophet Amos that he was drawing from, because Amos was at times an angry prophet.

Rev. King taught and spoke in a way that addressed power, anger and fear from the vantage point of faith, and particularly the vantage point of love.

Anger on its own is destructive and divisive, and violent. Anger with love is simply a station on the path to jsutice. Anger with love, Rev. King taught by his words and his actions, anger with love is indignation. That becomes fuel for righteousness and for service. And somewhere along that way, anger is transformed even into joy and into song. And then comes another phase of anger, but it is again just a station, through love, on the way to righteousness and service.

The prophet Amos began in fear -- he compared himself to someone reacting to the roar of a nearby lion. But he transformed that into a message about the cleansing waters of justice, and into a message of love, challenging love.

In front of the rabbis, Rev. King talked about anger unmoored from faith and love in both the Nixon campaign and the Black Power leadership. Today we see of course that same kind of anger and fear unmoored from any faith and any love, in the president and the destructive part of his following, and in too many leaders of the protest movements as well.

We need to look at our own anger and fear, and channel it back through faith, into love and commitment and service.

Justice, power, fear, anger -- Rev. King’s teachings about all of these are a roadmap we need for today. We need first of all to see the justice issues behind the suffering of people in our country, in our city and region. To say it straight and simple -- a city with pockets of affluence and pockets of poverty like ours is not a just city.

We need to believe, even so,that justice is how God’s creation is built, that it is the nature of justice to flow like a mighty stream.

When we are angry at those who deny the possibility of a just society, or who argue that the steps of change are not realistic, we need to transform that anger into love and service to those who are suffering.

And we need to believe that success will come from power rooted in nonviolence, in true words magnified by prophetic voices and mass presence and mass action -- the truest real power in the world.

Deep in my heart, I do believe . אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶּאֱמוּנָה שְׁלֵמָה  Ani ma’amin be-emunah shlaymah. There is so much yet to do, and so much yet that we can do, to repair and heal our society. We were privileged, as Jews and as rabbis, to be partners so often with Rev. King,  and to have him speak directly to us. May we continue to learn from him, zichrono livracha, that his memory may bless us and through us bless many others.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

Israel's 70th Anniversary

This was column in the bulletin of Temple Beth Abraham for April 2018. 

This spring, the State of Israel marks its 70^th anniversary. By the Hebrew calendar, it falls on April 18-19, and by the secular calendar, on May 14. We are looking forward to celebrating together on Sunday, May 13 at the synagogue. We have a remarkable program with architect Stephen Schwartz and 70,000 Lego ™ pieces, who will guide us to build a model of Jerusalem! There will be music with our New Hampshire sh’licha Noam Wolf, food and all kinds of fun.

And in the meantime, we welcome the Deputy Consul-General of Israel in New England, Matan Zamir, to join us for a lunchtime talk on Saturday, April 27.

We each have so much to celebrate this year, whether you are an Israeli, an American Jew with family in Israel, or simply a Jew. Israel’s reality has always been on two levels, which go back to the emergence of modern Zionism in the mid- to late-1800s.

First is simply the saving and protecting of Jewish lives. The Zionism of Pinsker and Herzl began as a response to anti-Semitism in Europe. It was an era of weakening or crumbling empires and autocracies, when nations were claiming their identities, and often Jews were left on the outside or actively targeted.

Starting literally the day after its independence in 1948, Israel began taking in Jewish refugees from Europe and the Middle East. One of the incredible Israeli stories is the integration of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the first decade of the state. Imagine a country doubling its size in a short time – building homes and infrastructure, trying to create a national culture, all under conditions of war and the shadow of the Shoah. Not everything was done perfectly, to say the least. But lives were saved in massive numbers.

In more recent times, the suddenly freed Jews of the former Soviet Union and the Jews of Ethiopia found safety in Israel. And now, the Zionism of Jewish survival continues as Israel defends itself, against terror groups and the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons.

Israel has also from the start been about even more than protection and survival. We celebrate the Zionism of Jewish excellence. Even in the 1800s, when the imperative of saving lives was front and center, Zionists dreamed of creating an ideal society and a new Jewish personality.

A. D. Gordon’s celebration of working the soil. The socialist vision of Syrkin and Borochov. The religious idealism of Rav Kook. The cultural renewal called for by Ahad Ha-am. Each generation has taken pushed these visions of Jewish cultural and spiritual and ethical excellence further and further.

As a result, Israel is a society of social and cultural creativity – and also a society of intense self-criticism. That too is part of the Zionism of moral excellence.

The Israel of Jewish excellence is the Arava Institute, leading the way in both environmental sustainability and Jewish-Arab coexistence. It’s the Shalom Hartman Institute, developing a modern Torah applying Jewish values to dilemmas of sovereignty and war.

It’s the Yerushalmit Movement, which started as a response to hate murders in and around Jerusalem, as people gathered weekly in Kikar Tziyon in the center of Jerusalem to talk across difference – religious and secular, Israeli Jew and Palestinian Arab, gay and straight.

Israel at 70 years old is not finished on either level. The matter of Jewish and Israeli survival, and the challenges of Zionist excellence, continue and they are not easy. Certainly the conflict between official state Orthodox Judaism and others is not resolved. Nor is seventy years of war, including more than fifty years of ruling Palestinians in the West Bank.

But celebrations are for celebrating!

This anniversary is an Israeli celebration and a Jewish celebration. A lot of times, we think about the overlap between our connection to Israel and supporting the Israel-America alliance as good for both countries. That’s part of my own advocacy work with AIPAC. But one thing that this anniversary is not: an American holiday.

I support the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by the U.S. government and the long-overdue establishment of an embassy there. But to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and to the Jewish community here, I would say: This anniversary period has nothing to do with the United States, and it should not be shared or rented out for that purpose.

I hope the Israeli government will have the self-respect to say to President Trump: Dedicate the embassy in June or later. Israel’s anniversary is not an American celebration, though we welcome you to celebrate alongside us. This spiritual, existential, and peoplehood moment is ours, not yours.

I hope to see everyone together on May 13, as we build a physical Jerusalem and contemplate the ideal Jerusalem. Happy 70^th anniversary to the State of Israel!

L’shalom,
Rabbi Jon

Resources Related to End-of-Life Planning

I am putting this up in connection with my RISE course about autonomy and medical ethics. Here are two resources I mentioned that are worth looking at and printing out:

• The Conversation Project starter kit -- a step-by-step guide for preparing to have a conversation with any loved one about your end-of-life desires or your questions. The guide is terrific because it even asks things like where you want to have the conversation.
• The Foundation for Healthy Communities has links here to New Hampshire-specific forms to download and complete, along with some helpful supporting materials.