Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

Torah Reflection on Truth and Peace as of Right after Thanksgiving

I just wanted to get on record some reflections on what it's like as a rabbi and leader right now, a snapshot in time.

I have spoken previously about the prophetic verse Ha-emet v'ha-shalom ehavu -- "Love truth and peace." In the Talmud, the verse is quoted in the course of an exploration of a debate between the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. They had some major, nontheoretical and nontrivial disagreements about the laws of marriage. And yet they allowed their children to marry each other. After trying without success to imagine scenarios when the disagreements didn't matter, the Talmud says that both schools of thoughts were loving both truth and peace. Yet they remain in tension, or at least in some cases truth seems to take a backseat.

I have certainly been living this tension for the past month. I am spending time, deliberately, with people who voted both for President-Elect Trump and Secretary Clinton. (The Talmud says that the School of Hillel is followed because they mention their opponents' arguments and positions before their own. That's why I am making it a habit to refer to the president-elect first.) I am trying, without straying from the truth about bigotries and sexism, to be a bridge of peace. It is not easy, but I am committed to it.

In the Torah this week, Rivka experiences twins fighting in her belly. She says, "If so, why is this that I am?" and goes to explore the issue with God. God tells her, "two peoples are in your belly, and two nations from your innards will separate." I read Rivka's question to be -- what is the meaning of "I", the unity of myself, my integrity, in a situation where two opposing forces are jousting, and they are both so connected to me that I feel the struggle in my body?

I have felt most days since Election Day this tension in my body. I seek not to lose my integrity, my I-ness, even as I listen carefully to the two or more perspectives that are vying with great energy.

I am grateful to the many congregants who have talked to me individually, in my office and on the phone and in coffee shops, and to the groups who have gathered with me too and let me structure some conversations. More to come. I will shortly post on a separate page a number of resources and ideas, to work against hate and division.

Parashat Toldot: How Different is Different? Election 2010 Through the Lens of Jacob and Esau

Parashat Toldot begins with the pregnancy of Rivka.  It is a difficult and uncomfortable pregnancy -- "the children were running around inside her".  She and Yitzchak approach God, who informs them:  "Two peoples are in your belly, and two nations will separate from your insides.  One nation over the other shall be stronger..." (Genesis 25:22-23).

The two boys emerge as twins, the second one out holding the heel of the first.  Yet immediately the boys seem different, and they become more so as they grow.  The midrash uses this story to explore every facet of the question of "similar but different" or "separate but connected."  In the rabbinic period, Yaakov and Esav were understood as Israel and Rome.  More poignantly, in the Byzantine period they were Judaism and Christianity.  Each midrash has its own reading on the question:  How similar are we (Jews) and the other?  How different?  What means more?

If you look at a map of the United States this week, color coded by the party of its new Congressman, you see a picture vastly red with pockets of blue.  If you total all the votes cast in elections for the House of Representatives, you find what looks like about 55 percent for the Republicans and 45 percent for the Democrats.  Which is the truer description of similarity and difference among Americans?

I read today a document prepared by a group of Muslim scholars reaching out to the leaders of all the world's major Christian churches.  The document spelled out in detail the similarities in the teachings in Christianity and Islam about love of God and love of other human beings.  The same document acknowledged the vast amount of lethal weapons in the hands of Christian-led and Muslim-led governments.  Which is the truer description of similarity and difference?

It takes very little to activate differences.  There is a famous experiment in social psychology called "The Robbers Cave", conducted by Professor Muzafer Sherif.  In the study, a group of white middle-class boys, all the same age and from similar backgrounds, were randomly split into two groups and each group was bused to its own camp.  Each group bonded, each group gave itself a name -- the Eagles and the Rattlers -- and the boys were initially unaware of the other group.

In the second phase, the groups were brought together under various competitive scenarios.  Very quickly, physical violence broke out between the groups.  It escalated beyond what the research team had predicted.  In the end, Professor Sherif had to generate problems and tasks that threatened both groups or required both groups' participation in order to solve a dramatic problem -- to pull off a rescue, or deal with a water shortage facing both.

The Robbers' Cave study showed that even the smallest differences can become magnified quickly and easily.  Professor Sherif would say:  even if Yaakov had been as hairy as Esav,  if both had been hunters, there would have been conflict if only one could inherit the blessing from their father.  Yet if there had been a common threat to unite them, an overarching problem to solve, even the studious Yaakov and the brutish Esav could have come together.

This week, Democrats and Republicans face a choice.  Are we so dramatically different, that we have to view the other as a threat to our society?  Or can we recognize a common origin in the idea of liberty, even if one child says "equal liberty" and the other says "live free or die"?  Can we recognize in the crisis of joblessness something even more important than the difference?

This question goes not just to Obama and Boehner, but to each of us who is worked up about the election, whether our candidate won or lost.  It's no secret how much people have invested in the differences, how much of our identities are tied up in our philosophies.  Nothing wrong with that.  Yet for the good of all of us, we need to be not just Esav, but Yaakov's twin brother.  Not just Yaakov, but Esav's twin brother.

Parashat Toldot: The Voice and Hands of Yaakov

"Jews are not an electrical people."  One of my rabbinical school classmates quoted this line in a seminar, said I think by one of her friends.  It rang true at the time; I knew very few Jewish people who finished their own basement or did anything involving wiring.

Up here in New Hampshire the story is entirely different.  Here, Jews are electrical people, with a particular talent for woodworking.  And, to get to the brothers Yaakov and Esav, there are members of the tribe who hunt as well!

Our parasha this week is framed by the contrast between Yaakov, "who sat in tents", and Esav, who had "the hunt in his mouth" (Genesis 25:27-28).  Yaakov is presented as crafty and strategic, Esav as rough and tough.  Many of the traditional midrashim go a step further.  Yaakov's tent is taken as the beit midrash, the house of study.  Esav, by contrast, is spiritually and intellectually empty, all power and no soul.

In the early modern period, many Europeans denigrated Jews for being a strange kind of society -- too many intellectuals, too few people who worked with the hands.  Of course, it was medieval Europe that had forced the Jews to live that way.  But modern Jewish movements picked up the same criticism.  Jewish socialism and Labor Zionism wanted to remake the Jews, as modern industrious people who did depend on others to work the land and to build things.

When Yaakov comes dressed up in animal skins with food for his blind father, Yitzchak muses, "The voice is the voice of Yaakov but the arms are the arms of Esav" (Genesis 27:22).  To Yitzchak, the combination of the two sets of qualities didn't make any sense.  But today, it's the dichotomy that doesn't make sense, or shouldn't.

It's true that Jews are overrepresented in the Wall Street wrongs of the past few years.  Some will say that it's Jews living off the real labor of others.  That it's Yaakov cleverly trading some stew today for birthright-and-blessing, booming profits down the road.  But in New Hampshire you can see that Jews in fact do everything.  Your elders and your officials....your woodchoppers and waterdrawers (Deuteronomy 29:9-11).

We're a grounded, down-to-earth community capable of big thoughts, visions, and commitments as well.  Maybe what made Yaakov and Esav as youths both so dislikeable is the fact that both were forced to play only one type.  From our vantage point, we should be proud if we can have arms like Esav's when they are attached to the voice that would eventually mature inside Yaakov.