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Reflections on Leadership From This Week in the Torah

This is the sermon I gave three years ago, during the dog days of the 2016 election. But there is a lot here that still resonates, about the leaders that I crave. I'm going to work on the text I refer to there from the Slonimer Rebbe and probably teach more about it this Shabbat.

https://www.rabbijon.net/rabbijon/2016/07/thirsty-for-leadership.html

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.

 

Sing Freedom: Mi Chamocha Melodies

This coming Shabbat is Parashat Beshalach, including Shirat Ha-Yam, the song of the crossing of the sea into freedom in Exodus 15. Every day at our morning and evening services, we sing two excerpts from the song, from the exact middle and the end:

Mi chamocha ba-elim Adonai
Who is like You, Adonai, among the godlike powers
Mi kamocha ne'dar bakodesh, nora t'hillot, oseh feleh
Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in praises, doing wonders?
Adonai yimloch l'olam va'ed
Adonai rules through all time and space, forever

Here are some interpretations of these words, and the words of prayer around them, in music.

From our own community member and teacher, Laura Hegfield:

Mikamochalaurahegfield2014-2

The Maccabeats, performing Yaakov Shwekey's melody:

One of Reb Shlomo's, from the children's service music at B'nai Yeshurun in Manhattan (right-click to open in a new tab or it might not work):

https://www.bj.org/wp-content/themes/bj2012/audio.php?id=null&file=shabbat-prayers/mi-khamokha_hgauss-rrosenthal-lsilver-ksolomon.mp3.mp3

Debbie Friedman's later version:

To the tune of "Misirlou" (a folk song, title means "Egyptian") -- very rough cut by me:

Mi chamocha misirlou

 

Why Exodus Is the Most Important Book of All Time

My D'var Torah at Beth Abraham on Shabbat morning, Saturday, January 6, 2018.

Today we begin reading the most important book in human history -- Sefer Shmot, the book of Exodus. 

This is the book that transformed what was possible in the world and what was imaginable in the world. You can divide human history and culture into before the book of Exodus and after the book of Exodus. You can divide world literature into before Exodus and after Exodus, and you can divide religion into before Exodus and after Exodus. No one had ever told a story like this, about the gods or the powers of the world, its peoples or its leaders.

The book of Exodus made it possible to change the world, and to tell other stories about change and hope and transformation. And we, the Jews, are the Exodus people -- people who not only experienced the Exodus from Egypt, but whose whole civilization is built out of this book we are reading here over the next ten weeks.

Genesis, which we just finished last week -- it’s not bad. A God who creates the universe with no more effort than speaking, who tracks people across the world from Mesopotamia to Egypt and talks to them, who identifies special individuals and sends them on missions and adventures -- Genesis is bringing some game. 

But Genesis isn’t radically new. There are new things in it, but it’s full of the kinds of stories you could imagine in other cultures. And Genesis is still a book about the familiar world. It ends not with transformation, but with exile.Exodus announces itself as something different right away. You see it in the opening scenes, when women get out in front of men and even in front of God, taking charge of the transformation of the world where Genesis left off. The world of suffering and oppression. Midwives who talk back to power, an inventive mother, a courageous sister, Pharaoh’s own rebellious daughter -- they are the last line holding against total evil and the first to rise up.

And what a transformation takes place, from the first to the last chapter of Exodus.

Who could imagine this powerless people, whose babies were being tossed into the Nile, standing at a mountain hearing God speak to each and every one of them?  In chapter 1, the Israelites are slaves who have to find their own straw to build cities of darkness to reinforce Pharaoh’s power. By the last chapter, they have given whatever they have in overflowing generosity, and they have built a Sanctuary so perfect that God’s presence immediately fills it and lights it up.

The book of Exodus changed forever how human beings conceive of God. Until Exodus, gods were parents and protectors and allies of kings and overlords, and specific lands. In Genesis, the God Who created heaven and earth seems to be mostly on high, at the top of a ladder of angels perhaps. 

But in Exodus, God leaves our land and God comes down. Down to the Nile, to the lowest spot in the low valley of Egypt.  Down from the sky into those waters of chaos and death that are carved, down, deep into the lowly Earth.  God comes down to the lowest people, who are beaten and dehumanized, whose hands are muddy and blistered and broken, who are detached from their souls to the point where they can hardly do anything but groan, who can’t think beyond the terrible things happening to them now.

God has to fight for them, against a tyrant who everybody thinks is really the god.  God has to fight for the Israelites’ awareness. God has to get next to them, down in the mud and in their slave camps, and next to the taskmasters too, just to get any of these people even to notice.  

God has to frustrate the expectations of all those who think that gods only go with grandeur like Pharaoh has, the beauty and richness of his palace and his temple and his architecture, and the hosts who do his bidding.

The book of Exodus says: This is much harder work than creating the universe. As you read Exodus, it’s clear that redemption, rescuing these people, takes much longer than six days. And it is a much, more, difficult labor than the Genesis project of making the world.

And by coming down, God shows us that more is involved in being God than pure power -- more than just the abililty to make things and do things.  The task of redemption requires commitment, and loyalty, and dedication.  Rabbi Heschel called it divine pathos: God’s essence is that God hurts when people hurt. And God is enraged when people stand by and go along or do nothing.  

So when people are enslaved, oppressed, suffering, the hurt is so large that God’s response to that is the largest thing that God ever does.What God does in Exodus by redeeming our people is the only thing big enough to justify the idea that God is great. God’s true nature, the gadol-ness, the greatness that we associate with the notion of God -- it isn’t manifest until God comes down, as far from Heaven as possible, into Egypt.

The book of Exodus changed forever what it means to be a leader on behalf of God. In previous stories, in other Middle Eastern societies, leaders were blessed by the gods from the beginning and show off divine powers at a human level. Or they were heroes with magical powers or immortality.

Moses is different. Moses isn’t the son of God. He actually the one who ran away for decades even when he felt responsible for what he saw.

Moses at the burning bush doesn’t remotely see himself as a hero, as a leader. He doesn’t have any of the basic credibilities of a leader or a hero -- he can hardly speak, he does not inspire. As soon as Moses experiences his revelation at the burning bush, he argues that he can’t do what God wants. This resistance against leading is easily the longest conversation between anyone in whole Torah.

At almost every key moment in Exodus, Moses is shown not to be a god, but simply to be a human vessel, an instrument for divine energy and purpose. Moses teaches that anyone can become this, regardless of origins or personality or specific qualities and talents.

The book of Exodus redefined forever what it means to have laws and religious practices. In other societies, religion helped cement the social order and taught people how to be servants for the needs of the gods.

The law code of Hamurrabi in Babylonia, for instance, starts off with the investigation and punishments around murder. The law code in Exodus, right after the Ten Commandments, puts the laws of murder and assault second. The first law is about how to set free the slaves in our own society.

This teaches us that every law and every practice is not simply to serve God but to imitate God. We are God-like, the book of Exodus says, whenever we follow the law, live the law. When we bring about more freedom in our world, or pay our workers a fair wage on time, or watch out for the stranger because we know what it’s like to be the stranger -- Exodus reminds us that we are being like the God who liberated us from the house of slavery. 

And the way we pray and the rituals that structure our day and week are Exodus rituals. We sing the Song of the Exodus morning and night, every day. When we rest on Shabbat, we affirm that we are not slave laborers anymore.  When we give tzedakah, we are told that this is the opposite of hardening our hearts to people who live in our community and our world.

And our sacred spaces are celebrations of the Exodus. The whole last section of the book of Exodus is about how slave builders became builders of a Sanctuary to the God who frees slaves. It’s about making physically permanent the transformation from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from hopelessness to possibility. As permanent as any pyramid or mummy.

And of course, Pesach. God says:  The moment of liberation is going to be there, always. We bring it back at least once a year in an elaborate way. So that every time you are oppressed by another Pharaoh, by armies of enemies, by illusion or illness or depression, you will know that I come down, I come there, as low as you are or as low as things go.  No matter how much mud or blood or tears as there may be.  I can’t stop those things from happening, God says, but I can and will be there and fight for you to notice Me, to see me fighting there with you.If a religion is made up of ideas about God and rituals and sacred places -- then the book of Exodus changed religion forever. Not just Judaism, but every religion that ever learned about the book of Exodus.

And the book of Exodus changed history, and the possibilities of history. After Exodus, human beings could know that oppressive power might be strong, but it’s never an equilibrium. Each time the Jews have found ourselves against an unshakeable enemy or an unmovable evil -- we have read Exodus and told the stories and prayed Exodus and observed Exodus -- and eventually overcame.

And other peoples have read the book of Exodus and the stories and histories inspired by it, and the same things have happened. The book of Exodus created and continues to create hope, to prove that hope is not absurd in our world.

We are Exodus people. Charged to keep reading and teaching this book, and to define our lives as responding to this book. We take it in, and we broadcast it out. That is what it means to be a Jew -- to live in the light of the most important book ever written.

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Ki Tetze -- Learning from a Vigil at ICE

These are fairly unprocessed reflections, on a day when I went up to the Federal office building in Manchester, NH, to be part of an interfaith prayer vigil. Today, as on many days, people are being summoned to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to show they have plane tickets to leave the country, or they will be detained. My understanding is that the first family we saw this morning got a reprieve until March. Otherwise today, the parents would have had to leave and their children would have been taken home by someone else. They were in tears when they came out of the building, after a harrowing experience no doubt.

The Torah portion opens: Ki tetze lamilchama al oy'vecha... "When you go out to war on your enemies." Today it strikes me why the Torah uses wording that seems extraneous. Who else would you war against, if not your enemies? What else should you do against your enemies, but go to war? The Torah says -- war and fighting is for enemies, and enemies alone.

But in fact, today we get confused about who our enemies are. Immigration politics for over a century has been about turning groups of people into enemies. That happened to Jews, as in the 1940s during and after World War II, when the arrival of Eastern European Jews was resisted because we were accused of being not refugees but Nazi (!?) or communist infiltrators.

But when people in any group actually adapt to America, contribute not just economically but by becoming part of the community, become grateful patriots of this country -- those people are not our enemies. One person drove by our vigil and a car, a young man in his late 20s, and asked us why we want to commit suicide by bringing in people who want to destroy our faith. He doesn't know that the family in the Federal office building is not our enemy. There is a real issue of law, and people are working to reform our laws and figure out how to enforce existing laws. But we have to distinguish between who is our enemy and who is not.

This week I have been reading a book that I have mentioned almost annually on the High Holy Days the past few years, called Countrymen, by Bo Lidegaard. The book is about the safe escape of the Jews of Denmark during World War II after the Nazi authorities called for their deportations to camp. I'm only about a third of the way through. The part of the story that current grabs me is the specific day when Danes generally and Danish Jews particularly began to process the Nazi charge that Jews were enemies and not Danes.

For both Jews and non-Jewish Danes, there had been through the 1930s and early 1940s no language to even talk about "the Jewish problem", no language of separation even though Jews were Jews and other Danes weren't. It's heartbreaking to see Jews facing this question about themselves, and wondering about what other Danes would think and do under pressure. It's also illuminating, and inspiring, to see how many Danes rose to the occasion, and not just the infrequent "righteous gentile." Something was going on that enabled a whole society to refuse to see Jews as the enemy, despite being told so by propaganda backed by force.

This same society was clear about the difference between citizens and war refugees, or between patriotic citizens and totalitarians, whether Nazi or communist. It's possible to define your enemies, and fight specifically against them.

I know the language of enemies is harsh, but the Torah uses it. It's not a language of hate. Most of what we did this morning was a "Jericho Walk" around the block of the Norris Cotton Federal Building, seven times around the block in silence. This gave me the chance to take in everything -- the families we were there for, the flags of the USA and the state of New Hampshire and what they stand for, the fire station nearby, the ICE agents trying to do their jobs and enforce the law. The people who talked to us with encouragement, or honked horns. The people who laughed and jeered at us casually, who aren't neo-Nazi activists. There is nothing to hate here. There are some battles to fight, and some specific enemies.

May we have the wisdom to know the difference between enemies and not. May we have the courage to fight the right wars.

 

Building Mountains After Charlottesville

This was the sermon I gave on Saturday, August 19, 2017.

There is a sweet little film from about twenty years ago starring Hugh Grant, called “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain.” The story is that two government cartographers come to the small Welsh town of Ffynnon Garw, to measure the height of the mountain just outside the town. The cartographers determine that in fact it is not a mountain, but a hill, because it is slightly short of the 1000 feet required for classification as a mountain.

The villagers are of course dismayed, because they have always lived by a mountain. Their first response is just to assert to the surveyors that Ffynnon Garw is in fact a mountain village. But failing that, they develop a plan. They conspire to keep the cartographers from leaving town with their official measurement and their verdict. And while they are occupied, the townspeople begin to bring sacks of dirt to the hill, to dump there one on top of the other, in order to raise the height. They are going to make a hill into a mountain.

Of course they battle rain, which washes down their pile as it grows, but they keep going. Eventually, just before they have to leave town, the cartographers are brought back. And sure enough, by a small margin, Ffynnon Garw has its mountain.

This week the Torah portion talks about two mountains:

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃

See, this day I give before you blessing and curse:

וְהָיָ֗ה כִּ֤י יְבִֽיאֲךָ֙ יְהוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֕רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־אַתָּ֥ה בָא־שָׁ֖מָּה לְרִשְׁתָּ֑הּ

וְנָתַתָּ֤ה אֶת־הַבְּרָכָה֙ עַל־הַ֣ר גְּרִזִ֔ים וְאֶת־הַקְּלָלָ֖ה עַל־הַ֥ר עֵיבָֽל׃

It will happen, when Adonai your God bring you to the land that you are coming there to possess it, you shall put the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Eival. (Deuteronomy 11:26, 29)

Later on, Moshe instructs that half the people should stand on the top of one mountain and half on the top of the other. As Rashi describes it, from the valley the Levites would face Mount Gerizim and shout out what blessing is, and then face Mount Eival and shout out what curse is.

Blessing and curse. Clear as the tops of two mountains. Clear as an echoing voice.

There are things in the world that you have to strain to see. Where goodness, where harm, is in the shadows or in a small corner. But there are times when good and evil are in clear view and clear sound.

Last weekend – last Shabbat – was one of those times. We got a look at blessing and curse in Charlottesville. The mountaintop of blessing, of good, in the people who put their bodies and their lives on the line, to stand up for unity, to block hate from moving forward. To show an understanding of what African-Americans experience when they see icons of the era of slavery in public places.

The mountaintop of curse, of evil, in the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, who came with terror, hoping to hurt, armed to the teeth. Not to speak but to beat.

If you’re not sure – or if you don’t know what the answer is to the president’s analysis of good people and violent people in roughly equal measure – there is a documentary of about 20 minutes that I linked the other day and can send again. It has the whole story, the supremacists and the peaceful counterprotestors and the antifa, and you can see the relative numbers and the relative force. You can see Christopher Cantwell – he’s a prominent white supremacist who lives in Keene. He said he’s holding out for a president who doesn’t “give his daughter to a Jew”, someone like Trump but a lot more racist. I can’t imagine why the president of the United States wouldn’t stand up for the honor of his own family, why that wouldn’t engage him in standing up for us and the others who were targets of the demonstrators’ hate.

Blessing and good are a mountain, and curse and evil are a mountain.

What are the real sizes of those mountains? Which mountain should be looking at now? How long should we stand and face Har Eival, probing the details of the curse? And when is it time to turn around, to face Har Gerizim and shout, urging ourselves along in blessing?

Rashi wrestles with this in his commentary on the Torah. The Torah says that first the Levi’im look at Har Eival and call out the curse, and then they look at Har Gerizim and call out the blessing. But Rashi says it’s the reverse – first we are to hear the words of blessing ring out. Only then are we to listen to the curse. Only then can we appreciate what is evil, what evil deprives us of. Only after the blessing can we summon what we need to hear the words of the curse as they echo all around, without being flattened in the process.

Rashi’s insight is that hearing the curse is both necessary and dangerous. That mountain is there, and we need to see it. But no amount of looking at it will make it smaller. We can overwhelm and demoralize ourselves by gazing too much at it, railing about the fact that it is there at all. But we cannot afford to be dragged into helplessness. Offensive monuments can be taken down, but the mountain of the curse will not fall into the sea so soon.

There are people who choose to stand on that mountain, and we can’t pull them off in a day. All we can do is to keep them there, and set up to prevent other people from going up there. That’s what the counterprotesters were doing in Charlottesville last Shabbat, and in Boston today.

It is not healthy to keep reading the same opinion summaries over and over, and to be stuck in rage about people who don’t understand. At some point, that is self-indulgent. At some point, the issue isn’t how bad we feel and how outraged we are, but the actual effects of institutionalized racism on African-Americans. I myself have made this mistake, even this week. As I spent time reading and writing and networking, it took me until Thursday to reach out to the local African-American leaders I actually know.

The shadow of Har Eival, the mountain of the curse, will still be there no matter what we are doing. We don’t have to stare at it directly all the time.

And it is good for us to look at Har Gerizim, the mountain of blessing – the mountains of blessing. Look at how many people, increasing all the time, are opening their minds and opening their hearts to people who are different, who suffer more because of their difference. More in every age group, not just young but old as well. More in every ethnic and religious group – those established in this country for centuries, and those that are newer. More people in both political parties. This is also part of the news, but it’s not always in the news. We have to make a conscious effort to stand on the mountain of blessing.

But it’s not just about where we look – how we center ourselves spiritually, in reflection. Sometimes it seems like the mountain of blessing isn’t quite as high as it needs to be. In geographical reality, in fact, the blessing mountain of Har Gerizim is just a bit shorter than Har Eival, the mountain of the curse. We are, then, exactly in the same position as the residents of Ffynnon Garw. Our mountain looks, this week, like it is not quite high enough.

I don’t believe that the mountain of the curse is truly higher. But there is no question that we need to make the mountain of blessing taller than it is.

That work is the work of passion, and of community, and of grit.

I don’t doubt that there is passion.

Community – I have been looking for that one place in Greater Nashua where you find all the leaders of different groups, communities of color and ethnicity and faith, civic and government and business leaders. There are only incomplete groups. The interfaith council does not have enough congregations. One Greater Nashua is perhaps the biggest table, and we are missing wide swaths. Within our congregation, the most developed relationships are between our Klezmer band and the Gospel choir. We need to build on that.

Community is crucial, because fighting back against public hate is only the surface level. To get beyond general proclamations, to change society, we need to be where we can talk – about what different groups have in common, and about the competitions and conflicts and jealousies between hated groups. About what we can learn from other groups’ experiences, and about what they can learn from ours.

It’s out of that talking and those challenges that a deeper e pluribus unum comes out. It’s more than what we aren’t, what we’re against – it’s what we build. And we have to know each other better to do that, and there’s no shortcut. It takes time.

And the gritty work is about finally building the society that the mountain of blessing is beckoning and promising. Taking down the monuments, standing off with hate – those will seem easy in comparison. Our passion, our community, and then our detail work are necessary, because the answers we need are in good housing, which has to be designed and built. In education that doesn’t give up on anyone and teaches young people to live together with difference through their many years together in school. In good law enforcement. And in an economic life that invests in the people of all backgrounds and all regions who have been left behind, who haven’t had something to believe in and who are at each other’s throats as a result.

That’s what the mountain of blessing will be built of. Those are the sacks of soil, passed from hand to hand, slipping sometimes and sliding down, but building up if we keep at it.

And when we do, we will see that the two mountains are in fact different. The mountain of evil may seem like a monolith sometimes. But the mountain of blessing will be a sight to see. It will have a mighty foundation, set in place by the God of the universe, and it will bear the mark of the human hands that have raised it, that have lifted it high above the other mountains.

This is about more than two Shabbatot, in Charlottesville and Boston. See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse. We will have to keep at this work, and return here to talk about it often. But I know that we will. We will keep climbing up this hill, no matter how steep it seems, no matter how rough the path to reach the blessing.

And we will find that we are, as we always thought we were, a mountain village.

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

 

Starting Over: What Is the Torah?

What is the Torah? This week we start reading it from the beginning on Shabbat. We usually think about the Torah one story at a time, or one teaching at a time. What is the Torah when we zoom back? If you've got seven and a half minutes to listen, here are some thoughts on the Torah as a whole:

Rabbi Jon's 7-1/2 minute overview of the Torah