Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

The Grape Cluster and the Two Who Carry It: A D'var Torah for Pride

This is the D'var Torah I gave for Pride Shabbat 5781/2021, for Parashat Sh'lach L'cha (Numbers 13:1-15:41).

I love this parasha about the scouts, the m’raglim, and the fact that the Torah is so brutally honest about how hard it is to go forward even to a land of milk and honey, even when the alternatives are to stay in a desert or to return to Mitzrayim (Egypt). I love the duality of feeling like giants vs. feeling like grasshoppers -- and as I’ll tell you in a bit, thanks to Pride Shabbat I love the big cluster of grapes, so large it takes two people to carry it.

When I look forward on Pride Shabbat, toward a promised land, I personally have to start by looking back, to a day I think of as “The Lunch of the Three Jonathans.”

It was right after a final exam during college, and I remember this lunch partly because we ate at one of the dining halls I almost never went to. I can’t remember if I ran into two other Jonathans by accident or if I had plans with one and the other showed up too.  These two other Jonathans were distinct and important in my life at that time.

Any one of us could have become rabbis, and we briefly talked about it that day because I thought I might and I really thought they should too, both of them. Of the three, Jonathan #1 -- I’ll call him just Jonathan -- he really was the one most suited at the time to become a rabbi. He had the widest vision; he had the widest ranging intellect of the three of us; he had integrity and fearlessness about being an activist; he had been an active youth group person in high school. I brought up the rabbi thing and Jonathan laughed, a certain look on his face that was trademark for him -- a combination of a silly grin and a knowing, “no-way” laugh. If it’s possible to be simultaneously loving and telling someone how stupid they sound for the thirtieth time, it was that kind of laugh.

Jonathan #2 at the table was me, the only one called Jon to the exclusion of Jonathan. Jonathan #3 was a star yeshiva student, sometimes called Jonathan and sometimes Jon, and he’s a whole other story.

I knew Jonathan wasn’t going to rabbinical school but it was fun to poke him about it periodically and I didn’t mind the look and the laugh. I thought I knew at the time why Jonathan wasn’t going to be a rabbi, because we were good friends and had talked about it. But it turns out, I didn’t know at all.

I didn’t know until another lunch three or four years later, in a different cafeteria, this one at the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was in rabbinical school, and Jonathan was on a panel of three people brought in to talk about what it had been like to grow up Jewish and gay.

I knew Jonathan was gay, but that was the first time I heard him speak about what it was like to have been a gay Jewish teen, in a liberal Jewish community in Boston in the 1980s. People in his youth group thought of Jonathan as the ultimate insider, a leader, he said -- and Jonathan told his story of being unseen, of the closet as the price he had to pay to belong. Other people, straight kids, could be draped on someone of the opposite sex in a friendly way as they hung out, but for him this kind of regular youth group behavior was a constant reminder of what he couldn’t share, and the very cameraderie that was so essential for other teens was alienating to him, and told him that there was no room for him within Judaism. We didn’t use words like “heteronormative” so much back then in the early ‘90s, not even the gay and lesbian speakers on the panel that day. But that’s what Jonathan was talking about.

Listening to Jonathan I was crushed on so many levels. Ashamed of ourselves as a Jewish community. Ashamed of the myself for the things I thought were tough for me when I was in USY. After hearing him talk that day at JTS, I couldn’t believe that Jonathan had ever set foot in Hillel.  He had so much Jewish and Israeli in him that just walking away was never an option -- that too would have denied him so much of himself. Jonathan came to the Seminary and said he appreciated that we students were listening to their stories, even though we couldn’t ever fix Judaism for him enough that it wouldn’t be painful. At least maybe we could do better for kids in the future.

I was crushed and ashamed that I had known Jonathan by then for at least five years, intense years, and considered him a good friend -- and I never knew any of this. What kind of a friend had I really been. What must have I communicated, out loud or in unspoken assumptions, that he wouldn’t think of me as someone he could share any of this with when we were in college.

I hold up these two lunches next to each other in my mind, the lunch of the three Jonathans in college and the lunch listening to Jonathan at JTS, because the second lunch was the first turning point for me when it came to think about Judaism and LGBTQ+. It was Jonathan’s gift to me and hopefully his gift through me. That was the first time I got that it wasn’t enough to be unfazed when someone came out, to treat it as no big deal, an interesting and important thing about someone just like other interesting and important things. That was the moment I realized that the Torah about LGBTQ+ lives ought not be confined to two verses in Leviticus. It’s because of Jonathan that I eventually became convinced about marriage equality -- later when his partner Peter was dying and I saw what was already one of the most beautiful love stories I had known become even more beautiful and heartbreaking. It took me quite a while even so to arrive where I got to about gay marriage right around the time I arrived here in New Hampshire.

I cannot stand here as an ally, or tell you that I use he/him/his pronouns, without acknowledging Jonathan, and the impact of his friendship and pain and integrity on me. It would not be truthful to say I always knew what the promised land looked like, that from the start I was like Kalev (Caleb) in our parasha and knew how to be a giant and not a grasshopper.

Jonathan might be horrified that I am talking about him to you only through a series of stories about Mitzrayim and the midbar, Egypt and the wilderness, and not getting on to talking about visions of the promised land. (I should say that Jonathan is someone I’ve also learned from about other things, such as affordable housing and Israel-Palestine.)  I really want to embrace the terrific formulation that the Tzedek crew created about this Shabbat, which I stole for my note yesterday. We are celebrating LGBTQ+ Jewish lives and we are celebrating what queer Jews have brought to Judaism, to Torah itself.  So let’s talk about that enormous cluster of grapes, so unexpected, so big and juicy it takes two people to carry.

A cluster like maybe you’re not sure what it is, and I can say about myself that I’m only just beginning to get a view of what might be called queer Torah, just in the past two or three years. And I have to say, I’m excited and challenged. Here are a few things I’ve begun to see, on my own scouting of the land we’re heading to.

Liz brought to my attention the Queer Niggun Project -- melodies composed and traditional prayers interpreted by LGBTQ+ Jewish creators. Last night I was so taken by the “Carousel Niggun” for L’cha Dodi, one of the big Shabbat love songs -- this version mashes up very traditional, yeshivish Hebrew pronunciation with both old and new idioms for the metaphor of God and Israel as lovers, married partners.

Or take Rabbi Benay Lappe, the founder and Rosh Yeshiva of Svara, which she calls a “traditionally radical yeshiva.” Her insight is that queer theory is actually the key to understanding the Talmud, because the Talmud was originally a project of marginal Jews who saw the world shaking before other Jews did, and these different-living, different-thinking sages were far more ready when the Temple was destroyed than any other Jews to pick up the pieces and make something strong and beautiful, which is the foundation of all of our Judaism today.

Rabbi Lappe says that a queer perspective is actually helpful and necessary for everyone, because the Talmudic rabbis were brilliant at tooling for a world exactly like that of the scouts in our parasha, who knew they would have to move into a new world about which so much was uncertain.  So at Svara you study in Aramaic, the rabbis’ own language, whether you’ve ever studied before or not, and sometimes their study events attract an aundience that is majority straight, because they find it’s the queer perspective that is illuminating. Once upon a time, this kind of thinking was the very definition of Conservative Judaism. I heard this same kind of perspective encoded musically in Itai Gal’s niggun from last night.

So this is my very new-for-me take on queer Torah. People like me, communities like ours, have tended to talk about LGBTQ+ Jews as people “we” quote-unquote need to “welcome”, to “include”, and to do that we have to let go of something we have had, some earlier definition or some certainty. But really, these queer teachers and creators are saying: What we have is this cluster of fruit, and we can carry it together. Yes, you could say it’s heavy, it’s unusual, I don’t know what to make of it. Or you could say it is nourishing and it’s sweet and it’s been missing. It’s been there rooted in the land the whole time, but until we went looking for it, hopefully together, you didn’t recognize it. You thought milk and honey was in the future, but the truth is the promised land is even richer.

When I think about us, this community in particular, I think about the two scouts holding that large dowel between them, carrying this new and large fruit. I can easily imagine that one of them, but only one, was Kalev, confident about the future and ready to live in it right away. The other was concerned or had questions, felt the weight of it more than the sweetness. But they carried it together. That’s a moment I treasure too in the parasha. That’s why we invited Mimi Lemay here. That moment is a hope for us, so that we don’t get stuck in the desert for 40 years. We don’t know exactly what the promised land is like when it comes to equality or what it means truly to celebrate LGBTQ+ Jewish lives all the time. What we can know, and what I do know, is like this in the Torah’s words: tova ha-aretz m’od m’od. The land of our Pride is a good land; it is very, very good.

In the Midst, All at Once: A Torah for Pride 5782

This was the D'var Torah I gave for Parashat B’haalotcha on June 18, 2022.

When the same passage of Torah comes at you from four different sources the same week, you have to pay attention.

I always look forward to Parashat B’haalotcha because it’s the start of the frisky Torah, the Torah of complaining. It’s the beginning of the Torah’s textbook on group dynamics once the community of Israel starts moving out from Sinai toward the promised land. It’s easy to see our groups in these next few Torah readings. That’s the lens I usually bring. But I was thinking particularly this week about Pride Month, and I had said that I’d speak related to that on this Shabbat, since I plan to be away next week. And from some Torah e-mails I subscribe to and podcasts and such, about four times I found myself face-to-face with this from the parasha:

It was the first anniversary of the Exodus and Moshe instructed the people to observe Pesach and to offer the Pesach sacrifice. Then this (Numbers 9:6-8):

וַיְהִ֣י אֲנָשִׁ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר הָי֤וּ טְמֵאִים֙ לְנֶ֣פֶשׁ אָדָ֔ם 
וְלֹא־יָֽכְל֥וּ לַֽעֲשֹׂת־הַפֶּ֖סַח בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֑וּא 
וַֽיִּקְרְב֞וּ לִפְנֵ֥י מֹשֶׁ֛ה וְלִפְנֵ֥י אַֽהֲרֹ֖ן בַּיּ֥וֹם הַהֽוּא:
וַ֠יֹּֽאמְר֠וּ הָֽאֲנָשִׁ֤ים הָהֵ֨מָּה֙ אֵלָ֔יו 
אֲנַ֥חְנוּ טְמֵאִ֖ים לְנֶ֣פֶשׁ אָדָ֑ם 
לָ֣מָּה נִגָּרַ֗ע לְבִלְתִּ֨י הַקְרִ֜יב אֶת־קָרְבַּ֤ן יְיָ֙ בְּמֹ֣עֲד֔וֹ בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל: 
ויֹּ֥אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֖ם מֹשֶׁ֑ה עִמְד֣וּ וְאֶשְׁמְעָ֔ה מַה־יְּצַוֶּ֥ה יְיָ֖ לָכֶֽם:

"There were people who were ta’meh [usually translated “impure” but we’ll get back to that] -- ta’meh for the human soul." And they were not able to do the Pesach on that day. So they came up close in front of Moshe and in front of Aharon on that day. And these people say to him: We are ta’meh for the human soul. Why are we held back, why are we subtracted, from bring close the close-up offering of the Divine in its time among the Children of Yisrael? And Moshe said to them: Stand, and I will hear what the Divine will command for you."

Lamah ni’gara. Why are we subtracted. Why are we not included.

We, who are in a state of tum’ah for life of a person. This requires some elaboration. At first blush this group seem to be held away from the Sanctuary because they had recently been in contact with a dead body and need to go through a purification ritual and the passage of a certain amount of time.

Tradition broadens the interpretation to all matters of tohora and tum’ah, which are usually translated as “purity” and “impurity.” Better to understand them, however, in terms of our embodied human experience and our attraction to the Divine.

Tum’ah and tohora are all about cycles and blood and child-birth and intimacy. These are intensely spiritual and we experience them through our bodies, our gender, our sexuality, our relationships. How is it, they ask Moshe, that these would take us away from Pesach. Why should we be the ones deprived of the Pesach offering -- the offering of freedom, the sacrifice whose blood is compared to the blood of the covenant. How could our embodied experience cause us to be held back from the Divine Sanctuary, the holiest place.

We aren’t complaining to you, Moshe, like the others who kvetch about the desert food or challenge your leadership. We’re not complaining about you or your religion or your rituals or your teachings. On the contrary, we want in. We want it all, b’moado b’toch b’nai Yisrael --  at its proper time, in the midst of all the community of Yisrael. Lamah ni’gara. Why should we be substracted. Why should we not be included.

I think we can see something even in their phrasing -- "we are tam’eh to the soul of a person". Move from seeing us as “impure”, toward seeing us as “the soul of a person.”

Moshe according to one commentary says to them: I am over the moon that you asked this question of me, and that you want this question asked of the Divine. And I too want to hear what the Divine has to say.

And the answer that came back at the time of our ancestors is what we call Pesach Sheni, a second Pesach. The message they understood, as recorded in the Torah written at that time, is that one month later, anyone who was ta’meh come and do the Pesach offering one month later, exactly as would have been done at its scheduled time. Not only they, but anyone who was on a journey too far away or someone who is a ger, a person within the community but who has not yet become a full citizen of the community. Each of you can do Pesach Sheni. This is how you will be included.

The Talmud says that being distant doesn’t mean just far, far away. Even someone who at the time of Pesach is just a step outside the area of the Temple where the sacrifice is done is far enough away for Pesach Sheni. If you’re not quite inside, physically. If you’re not let in, or don’t feel let in by the community, or if you’re not quite ready to come in fully -- you still are entitled to Pesach, to the celebration of the covenant.

I have been mulling over whether this Pesach Sheni is the answer to the question lama ni’gara, why are we not included. Part of me hears this as a bit of separate but equal, or as still “we” insiders who celebrate Pesach together on time and you others who will include with us.

So many of our people who are lesbian or gay or bisexual, transgender or intersex or nonbinary or queer, or any truer description that I still strain to know and understand -- so many have asked nothing more or less than to be b’toch b’nai Yisrael, to be part of the community of Israel full stop. Not to have to frame the matter in terms of lama ni’gara, why are we not included, how can we be included. To have to ask that way means we still are incomplete.

And the Torah recognizes this, because at the end of the teaching of Pesach Sheni the Torah says: chukkah achat yih’yeh lachem. One law there will be for all of you. As if to say -- Whatever you have just read, it is not one Torah for all of us yet. There is work yet to do. Keep working on it, now and in future generations.

This Pesach Sheni is a step forward, a step of inclusion, and it is not the final answer. Somehow, our Sanctuary needs to be spacious enough for all our people, for people who experience in all different ways love and intimacy and longing and connection. Who in all different ways understand ourselves as the image of God in our bodies and genders and sexualities and gender identities.  Where no one of those is the norm that others have to be compared to and have to ask to be included around, or justified in terms of.

That part of the Torah reading spoke about people coming close, toward the Sanctuary where the altar and the Ark were. A bit later in the parasha, we read how the Ark with the tablets of the covenant would go out into battle with the people, and then come to rest when battle would pause or end. 

The Talmud teaches that the biblical ark had both the broken tablets that Moshe had shattered after the Golden Calf, and the new set of whole tablets Moshe had carved on the mountain. Rabbi Yehudah ben Lakish taught that the whole tablets would stay back in the Holy of Holies, while the broken tablets would go out into battle.

It is so important for Torah to go out with us, as we battle to defend the lives of transgender youth, and all LGBTQ+ young people. As we battle for the rights and reputations of caring adults in schools who listen to them and try to be their mentors and advocates. As we battle against those trying to pit parents against teachers. It is so important for us to carry our religion into this battle, because others battle with theirs and claim to speak for God. So we have to speak in the name of our covenant as well.

It is so important as we do so to recognize that we are marching with broken tablets. That our own Judaism is not yet whole, we have not finished doing teshuvah for the ways we have not seen, for the times we have not stood by queer people of all ages and their family members. We have to carry honestly the broken hearts of our own community, the mourning over opportunities to do better and care better that we missed over the decades. When we work on matters of justice and safety and wellbeing for LGBTQ+ people in our lives, when we battle, we have to hold close the broken times, and our own brokenheartedness about times in the past we’ve each fallen short and our community and Judaism have fallen short.

It is so important to think about the ways the traditions of our past need to be creatively broken and rebuilt. The Talmud in one place praises Moshe for breaking the tablets. Because anything we have written down no matter how inspired is incomplete and could be used to shut down our vision, to say that this much progress is all we need. We need to challenge ourselves to see more like the Divine sees, to see every expression of human love and connection as an image of Divine ahavah v’chesed (love).

The broken tablets go out into battle, because it’s by fighting out of Divine love that we learn how to repair them. It’s by going out and learning from other communities that are full of love, religious and secular communities, that we find the light that helps us see better what is hidden in the crevices of the covenant we already have. It’s by going out with our tablets that we bring them and bring ourselves, who have in the past wondered if our covenant was at war with them. To them, we bring what is broken and ask to work together to refashion them and refashion ourselves together.

Our movement of Conservative Judaism has been confronting our brokenness over sexual orientation and gender identity for the past three decades. Every since possibly the lowest point our movement has ever touched in 1992, when I was a rabbinical student and watched the shameful deliberations on stage in the Seminary auditorium -- which slammed the door on lesbian and gay Jews seeking to live openly in our communities. To fifteen years ago last winter, when our Committee on Jewish Law and Standards made it possible for gay and lesbian Jews to become our rabbis, to have intimacy,to marry.

Even then, we only as a movement could talk about the G and the L. We have been trying to catch up since then, including in our shul and including myself. It’s not only ritual and rabbinical status, but relationships and love and intentionality in every realm. From changing the nomenclature on our membership forms to listening to young people we educate to changing our assumptions about people we meet of any age. I am still learning the language, carrying broken tablets, figuring out which ones to break still and refashion. I am proud, and more than that I am grateful, that we have lay leaders who have taken the intiative to make sure we have a Pride Shabbat as a matter of course, and that this year for the first time we will march and have a table at our city’s Pride Festival next weekend. What a way to carry the ark of our covenant where it needs to be seen, where its power is so needed.

I try to look at my own kids with wonder and openness, and to wait for them each to tell me I’m queer or straight, rather than make assumptions. And indeed I try to look at each of you that way too, not to assume what I don’t know.

Each of us carries Divine love, for us, and through us for others. Each of us, young and old, has our own way, spiritual and embodied all at once, to love and connect, to yearn and commit. We are all in the center. We are all part of the same covenant at the same time. We are all blessed.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day was chosen by the UN because it is the day in 1945 when the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was finally liberated after the world woke up too late to the extent of Nazi atrocities. In 1942, a week earlier in the calendar, the Nazi leadership had convened the Wannsee Conference, a retreat at a fancy villa where plans to coordinate the "Final Solution" against the Jews was discussed and worked on.

 

We mourn all those who were murdered in the Holocaust -- Jews as well as Roma, disabled people, LGBT, political opponents of the Nazi regime. I mourn, for members of my own extended family and Laurie's family, and I think about how profoundly and concretely the Shoah affected our families.

 

I share this video made in New Hampshire for the purpose of supporting the education of students in public schools about the Shoah. There are interviews with survivors, family members, educators and others. Please share with anyone, especially with those who are teachers.

 

Violence and murder of one group by another is ancient, and the targeting of Jews is ancient as well. What makes the Nazi "Final Solution" different is the mobilization of culture, media, science, and industrial organization in a coordinated way to the goal of exterminating one group.

 

I am a member of our state's Holocaust and Genocide Education Commission, created to help our state's public schools fulfill a new mandate to teach about these things in middle and high schools. There are so parts of the specifics of the Shoah as a case study and the general themes that people ought to learn, among them:

• anti-Semitism in its modern forms and its many sources
• the systematizing and systemic mobilization of hate, discrimination, and violence against a group by a majority
• the sociology of followers and bystanders
• the "pyramid of hate" that helps us locate individual acts of bullying and violence in relation to larger trends of bias and violence
• the redemptive power of social leadership and individual moral courage

May the memories of all the individuals who were murdered in the Holocaust be remembered for a blessing.

 

Three Things I Did As Soon As I Got To The Office

I made three phone calls this morning, in an attempt to do something to head off the hate crimes and discriminatory actions suggested by people connected to the incoming Trump administration, to call for the un-appointment of Stephen Bannon, and to show some solidarity with the local Muslim community.

I called and left messages for:

• the Islamic Society of Greater Nashua -- (603) 786-7586
• Rabbi Haskel Lookstein of Kehillath Jeshurun in Manhattan, who is Ivanka Trump's rabbi -- (212) 774-5650
• the Republican Jewish Coalition -- (202) 638-6688

The more such calls the better. Phone calls are better than e-mails if you can. You'll find the words.

An Open Letter to Speaker Paul Ryan

This is a letter that I am mailing and publishing, prompted by the appointment of Stephen Bannon as chief strategist for President-Elect Trump. It reflects my personal political perspective and my own read on what Mr. Bannon represents, which overlap but are not the same as many of my friends and readers. I will also be sending a version of this to other officials, Ms. Ivanka Trump, and Mr. Jared Kushner.

An Open Letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan

Dear Speaker Ryan:

I write you as an independent voter from New Hampshire, a religious person, a Jew, and a rabbi.

First of all, congratulations on your re-election to Congress, and your selection once again as Speaker of the House. Thank you for your service to this country. My hopes are with you, your colleagues on Capitol Hill, and President-Elect Trump, that you will all conduct the business of government in a way that addresses our overarching needs, restores the most vulnerable to the center of our community, and brings us honor in our own eyes and in eyes of the world.

This letter is prompted by the appointment of Stephen Bannon as chief strategist in President-Elect Trump's White House. I am asking you, as the respected leader of your party in Congress, to call on the President-Elect to rescind this appointment.

I can't know whether all the views often expressed through Breitbart News are Mr. Bannon's own or not, or those of the President-Elect or not. It's enough to know that Mr. Bannon has proudly taken on the role of giving a megaphone to hate groups, and his prominence has emboldened such groups to attack and harm other people with impunity. People I know and care about are afraid in ways I have never seen before. Mr. Bannon's appointment is a disgrace to our country and the office of the President. I hope you will do everything you can to reverse it.

I am writing you more broadly as someone who has had hopes about the direction of the Republican Party that you, Speaker Ryan, have been sketching out over the past few years. As a religious person and a Jew, I have committed myself to make Torah the measure of my political allegiance, and not vice versa. I know that you, like me, have been engaged by the social teachings of your religious tradition. I am in other words one of your potential followers.

One reason I am not a registered Democrat is that I believe our social welfare policies often settle for approaches that separate and stigmatize people in need, and do not build enduring relationships of partnership and dignity – true equality. Whenever I vote for Democrats, I do so to try to make sure that there is funding so that people are not punished for being poor, do not starve or go without basic medical care. But I have been hoping that you in particular would flesh out and explain a more robust version of your own health care and anti-poverty plans.

Many of us are looking to you as the national leader who can present a new option for us to consider -- combining a vision of an inclusive American community, conservative economic principles, and strategies that address the specific obstacles that the most vulnerable among us face. Real plans backed by sufficient resources, designed to lift up individuals and make possible a true community that spans socioeconomic class.

In this past election year I was open during the New Hampshire primary to any candidate in either party who had such a vision of justice through community. I took every last moment to decide which party's primary to vote in and which candidate to support.

What I am telling you is that if your party follows through with an alliance with or a tolerance of hate at the highest levels, then you will forfeit your claim on my attention or the attention of people like me. It will be harder, and sometimes impossible, for you to ask me to take a careful look at your proposals, as against those of the Democrats which, despite their flaws, fund a certain level of services and care. You won't be able to ask me to trust your compassion overall, if you institutionalize voices and forces of bigotry and abuse at the highest levels of your party's power.

Now is the time for you to present your case. But you will have to make clear who you are, Speaker Ryan, and who you want your party to be and what you want this country to be.

There's nothing you can do to prevent people like Stephen Bannon and his alt-right followers from hanging on with your party. I don't hold you to that standard. But you can certainly avoid installing them in positions of power. And you can do more than react to statements of bigotry, which you have often done during this past year to your great credit. You can get out front and proclaim a vision of conservatism that begins with: We are all of us Americans. You can, with each new proposal you make, make a point of explaining to us how it will bring us all together. There is no easier start than to make clear that Stephen Bannon has a right to free speech and freedom of the press, but he does not belong in the Republican White House.

Our own community of Nashua, New Hampshire, has many people trying to model the country as it should be. In September, in the middle of the contentious national election, our Board of Aldermen debated and approved a proposal to make Nashua an official “welcoming city”, in support of the work that is being done here by a wide coalition to welcome and integrate immigrants and people of different backgrounds.

Just watching the parade of speakers and supporters was an incredible cause for hope, on our small scale. The Democratic mayor and the Republican head of the Chamber of Commerce. The Chief of Police, who talked about work being done with communities of different colors – and a black man who told of nearly being beaten when he tried to register to vote down south in the 1950s. Two refugees, speaking in their brand-new, incomplete English. Ministers, social workers, educators, community organizers.

As a local leader, I am committed to that kind of work and coalition building. I am attaching for you a sermon about faith and politics, liberalism and conservatism, that I gave a year ago on Yom Kippur. I think it will speak to your mind and your heart.

Thank you for your time and consideration. May you find guidance and strength through the One Whose life-giving energy and wisdom flows through all.

 

L'shalom – Toward Peace and Wholeness,

Rabbi Jonathan Spira-Savett

Nashua, New Hampshire

 

The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends

This is my column for August 2016 in the Jewish Reporter, the monthly newspaper of the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire.

The Torah opens with distinctions. Heaven and earth, land and water, sun and moon, animals and people. Weekdays and Shabbat. Distinctions that are pretty dramatic, clear-cut, and consequential.

Then, in the first story involving humans, another distinction is introduced. All the edible trees – and this one tree that's edible but you shouldn't eat it.

Adam and Eve said to themselves: Now that is a distinction without a difference. So they ate.

Our Torah sets up right from git-go the question of when differences matter, and when they don't.

In my first-ever undergraduate class on Talmudic literature, we were taught to find the distinction inherent in any statement of Jewish law. Sometimes it's right on the page, and sometimes you have to fill it in by figuring out the opposite of what's on the page.

Then, said our teacher, you ask: Is this a distinction that makes a difference? If so, what's so important about the difference?

Or alternatively, is this a distinction highlighted order to teach us precisely to ignore this kind of difference?

It's no exaggeration to say that issues of difference have come to dominate this election year, in a way few of us anticipated they would. But we've been struggling with this for a long time, in American society and in Jewish life.

Differences of gender, skin color, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class, place of origin, gender identity. Differences of religion, belief, denomination, observance.

One response is to say that there are very few legitimate distinctions among human beings. Attention to difference is rooted in prejudices from the past. The world would be better if we would take as little notice of difference as possible.

The Torah and Talmud suggest otherwise. We are supposed to notice difference, and even look for distinctions where they aren't apparent. And then, to work hard at deciding whether the difference is significant.

There is a even a blessing in traditional Judaism for seeing someone who looks distinctive, in a way you might initially find hard to see or to find beautiful: Baruch Atah Adonai, Elohaynu Melech Ha-Olam, M'shaneh Habriyot. Praised are You, Adonai our God, supreme through all time and space, Who makes variety among all creatures.

What is the value of looking for differences, when they can be so destructive?

Well, for one thing we see them anyway. Neuroscience has found that the emotional brain reacts positively or negatively to gender or skin color even before the cognitive brain realizes that someone is male or female, dark-skinned or light-skinned. It takes work to overcome this, and we need to realize what we're up against biologically.

Beyond that, the Talmudic method of study teaches that differences are where we learn everything.

It's by learning about the experiences of people with different skin colors that we find out what does and doesn't matter about color – when we should be color-blind, and when we need approaches that take account of color.

We have to name the core differences between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Which ones are about doctrines and beliefs, and which are socially and historically contingent? That's how we will know where the difficult discussions really have to be. And where there are opportunities to learn truths hidden in other's tradition.

It's by learning about Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Jews that we discover exactly when we have to worship and eat separately, and when our beliefs about God and society largely overlap in ways that compel us to study and work together.

It's true that religious and secular Jews are different. Yet it's fascinating to find out when our fundamental beliefs about life are actually first cousins.

We have to ask whether synagogues and Federations are actually different. Maybe in fact they are two types of institutions that share the exact same goals of education and community. The strengths may be different, and perhaps they should be deployed differently – but not as much as we used to think.

Listen sometime to the song from “Oklahoma.” The farmers and the ranchers had a lot to say about each other. They learned to be friends in full recognition of their differences, their mutual suspicions – and their common hopes for the new state.

In this summer of difference, may we set an example of noticing distinctions, so we can learn what really makes a difference.

 

Marriage for All

Today's Supreme Court decisions about marriage mark a great transformation in our country.  I am careful to remember that the Court's mandate is not precisely justice, in a broad moral sense.  The justices are responsible for interpreting the specific words of the U.S. Constitution, and the voluminous case law that is often about procedures ("standing") above other things.  But today, the decisions in both the Defense of Marriage Act case and the California Proposition 8 case clear the way for our communities to move in a more just direction.  That is what I hope from our Supreme Court, and it is up to us in our communities, democratically, to create a more broadly just society.

While I came early in my life to believe that gays and straights are equal, I did not at the same time know what to think about marriage between two men or two women.  As a religious person, ultimately, the considerations that persuaded me were not liberal concerns about equality, but fundamentally conservative concerns about responsibility and commitment.

I think a turning point for me was in 2003, when I read an op-ed by David Brooks in the New York Times.  With independence and clarity, Brooks made the case that our society suffers from too much focus on individual freedom and satisfaction over commitment, loyalty, and fidelity.  He argued that not only should marriage be available for gays and lesbians, but it should be encouraged.  Same-sex couples who make that commitment are not receiving a privilege from the "rest of us", but contributing something society desperately needs.

Brooks's conservative case for marriage for all resonated for me, because it's how I think across the board about what religion contributes to a free, individualistic society.

This is how I view things as a citizen of the U.S. and of my state, informed by my broad religious values.  The specific issue of religious marriage between two men or between two women is not exactly the same for me, and I need to spend some time making that case in my own community.  For now, I will just note that major institutions of Conservative Judaism -- the Rabbinical Assembly's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, and the Jewish Theological Seminary's rabbinical school -- have created a framework for religiously consecrated partnerships for two Jews of the same sex under a chuppah.

I celebrate today as an American citizen, and as a religious Jew.  Today, the traditional values of love and commitment have new channels and encouragements, in a society that badly needs them.

Judaism and GLBT Inclusion, Part 1

I had some time ago circled May 2 on my calendar.  The Shabbat when we read Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, which contain the two verses that through the ages have been interpreted by Jews and Christians against homosexuality.  I had been planning to teach from the pulpit about Judaism and the inclusion of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexuality, transsexual, and transgender.

Then a few weeks ago, Noreen and I responded to an offer from Keshet, a Boston-based group that works on GLBT issues in the Jewish community.  Two members of the staff came to speak with us, to talk about what we are or could be doing in the synagogue.  Out of that meeting came, among other things, our planned showing of "Hineini" on Monday, May 11 at 6:30.  It's a film about a teenager at the multidenominational Jewish high school in Boston who was out as a lesbian and wanted the school to allow her to establish a gay-straight alliance group.

And this week, I received a call from a member, State Senator Bette Lasky.  Two bills had passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives and were coming to the State Senate Judiciary Committee for discussion.  HB436 deals with same-sex marriage, and HB415 adds "gender identity or expression" to the antidiscrimination laws.  She wanted to know what Conservative Judaism has to say about these questions.

So it's time to speak.  I'll first tell you where I stand, then explain how I got there.  It will take me more than one post and the one talk to complete my thoughts, no doubt.  I invite responses, questions, dialogue at all points.

All people are created in the image of God.  In our society there should be complete equality regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.  In the Jewish community, there should be welcome to people of all sexual orientations or gender identities.  In American society, two people who love each other and are committed to a life together should be able to enjoy all the rights and privileges of marriage.   If two Jews who are the same sex approach me with that kind of love and commitment, I will talk with them about their relationship the same way I would with two people of the opposite sex.  If they are suited to be married, I will perform a religious ceremony under a chuppah that incorporates elements of the traditional Jewish ceremony of kiddushin and nissuin and that would be recognized as a marriage in those states that recognize same-sex marriage.  I am engaged with people I admire and trust, rabbis and others (of all sexual orientations), as we think about whether the Jewish ceremony for same-sex couples should be identical to the traditional ceremony of kiddushin v'nissuin.

Since these issues were before the Legislature this week, I wrote a letter to my state senator and to Governor Lynch.  I wrote them as an individual, in my own name and not in the name of Temple Beth Abraham.  But I share the text with you, along with my more elaborate thoughts on the blog here.

As a straight person, married with children, I try to watch the language I use when I talk about these matters.  It's easy to think of equality or marriage as a right that "we" (white, male, straight, etc.) give to "others".  That's how it plays out in a society where the political and religious decisions involve more men, whites, Christians, straights than women, people of color, religious minorities, GLBT.  But I believe that from God's point of view, it doesn't matter what there are more of.  It's about humans in the image of God, not whether there are enough gays, enough Jews, etc. to be a political interest group.

(Speaking of language:  I'll admit that I still don't know what the respectful language is that I ought to use.  I have no idea whether every time I say or write "gay" I should instead write "gay and lesbian" or GLBT or something else.  I don't know when to ask about someone's partner, husband, or wife.  My kavvanah, my intentions, are good and please forgive me and educate me if in the writing here I don't get it right.)

When there's a new or difficult question, I start with people.  Like many, I learned to understand something about being gay, or being in a same-sex relationship, from my friends who are.  As friends or students have come out to me, I have been sad and then angry.  To find out that people I cared about and admired were closeted, and then after coming out had the added burden of being everyone's gay friend, or the lesbian couple we know.  It must be hard, having to be in a minority and also having to serve as living proof that you can be transgender and be a great teacher or in a committed relationship that inspires other people.

My friends have had that burden.  It's only from them that I learned that GLBT isn't strange, that gay people can be simply great people.  Then from some who are not my friends, I learned that what do you know, there are gay people who are jerks too!  And with that I finally understood that none of this has anything to do with sexual orientation or gender identity.  Niceness and jerkiness are distributed all over humanity.  Same thing for the ability to form good relationships versus the inability to do so.  You find great people and people you'd rather not be around among men and women, straights and GLBT, Caucasians and people of color, religious and non-religious.

Groups don't earn their civil rights by being better or behaving better than some norm.  When I arrived at that formulation, I came to a new understanding of Genesis 1:  There is no group that is any more or less the image of God than any other.  And if straight people are not the only people with the divine spark, there's no way on theological grounds to say that heterosexual love is the only kind that has merit in God's plan.

That's how Genesis has become a text for me about equality and inclusion.  People showed me what the text means.  I am guided also by the Exodus.  The story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, of going out from Egypt, is the core story of Judaism.  It is a story about becoming seen, becoming free, and becoming part of a covenantal community.  When Moshe first went out from Pharaoh's palace, he saw, and then he understood what was happening to the Hebrews and why.  Then he allied himself with people who had been seen as "other."  And once he was on the scene, there was a vessel for God's energy of freedom.

That story of liberation and covenant is four-fifths of the Torah.  It's taking up most of our annual cycle, telling us that the liberation story is relevant each year we read it.  God is with those who are unseen, held down.  And we are told that we must imitiate God.  That's why I don't see the religious issue in terms of two verses of Leviticus.  Against those verses, I put entire chapters and books of the Torah.

I'm pausing for now.  I will write again, particularly about Conservative Judaism.  I will be speaking in the synagogue about some of these things on Shabbat morning, May 2, and will be e-mailing the congregation beforehand about it and about how to talk about these subjects with our children.

Shabbat shalom!

Obama, Inclusion, GLBT, Jews

A couple more thoughts on the election.

In the euphoria about what it means that America is inclusive enough to elect an African-American president, there was one blot on the record.  In three states, ballot initiatives were approved by voters that ban same-sex marriage.  I'm having trouble finding the texts of the initiatives in California, Florida, and Arizona.  So I don't know if or how they apply to "civil unions."  As a rabbi who consecrates same-sex unions, I see this as a civil rights issue.  I have many gay and lesbian friends who feel shut out at least a bit from the celebration.  There is work to do, and I hope at least that the breaking of one barrier will help with the other.

People continue to ask about Obama and Israel.  One interesting item:  Rahm Emanuel, who may become Obama's chief of staff, is Jewish.  As you can read here, Obama's close friend and chief strategist David Axelrod signed the ketubah at Emanuel's wedding.  The article also mentions a colleague, Rabbi Jack Moline, who used to study regularly with Emanuel at the Clinton White House.  I'm pretty sure that Rahm's son's bris took place at the White House as well.  More on Emanuel's day school background and links to Israel here; and also in the Jerusalem Post.  (The Orthodox rabbi mentioned in the Post article is a friend of mine and a real mensch.)  None of this proves anything about Obama, other than that he has many close advisers whose commitment to Israel is well-known.