Persistence and Respect: Learning From the Mess

We know that we can tend to romanticize the past.

When I was the rabbi in a previous congregation, a woman in my office would frequently tell me that her parents, in their eighties, had a tumultuous relationship with pretty frequent loud disagreements.

When her father passed away, her mother, shortly after the funeral, she said to her daughter, “you know, dad and I occasionally had our differences.”

Her daughter didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  She said, “mom, just a few months ago you and dad were arguing so strongly I had to literally pull you apart!”

Mind you, the mother may have had fonder feelings for her husband than she let on all along.  And perhaps his passing softened her feelings and her tone. 

But we know that we claim and reclaim the past in all kinds of ways.

On Shavuot Night, this upcoming Tuesday, we’re going to be looking at the questions “why we disagree” and “what we might do about it.”

In addition to studying traditional texts, we will hear a talk by Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU.

He has extensively studied the origins of morality.  What makes people hold the beliefs that they do about politics and social issues.

Why do some favor gun control and marriage equality while others are firmly opposed?

Why do some believe in extensive government-supported safety nets and others do not?

In a video that I sent to the congregation, Professor Haidt bemoans the extraordinary rift between left and right today and the inability to collaborate. 

He points out that there was a time of greater bipartisan collaboration, following World War II, when Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, compromised on legislation in order to make progress.

I understand that, but I would say that overall, in the history of our country, there was fierce partisan fighting and little compromise.  And we can learn from those times as well.

Having It All

A close college friend asked if I wanted to join him for the annual Columbia Barnard Hillel dinner, so I said sure.  As he had driven down from Boston for it, I figured I could take the train into New York City. 

So we met, mingled and had the reality check of recognizing that even though being among college students made us feel like college students, the students are the ages of our children.  And they weren’t looking at us like peers, they were looking at us as, well, potential funders for the programs they want to continue to enjoy.

But this will not be a discussion about the egos of middle-aged men, which are, frankly, predictable and not so interesting.

It will be a discussion about the challenge to “have it all” that these college students pose.

The students, whom we spoke with individually and who addressed the entire dinner crowd, want to have it all. 

They want to be fulfilled as individuals.  They want to find fulfillment in the Jewish community.  They want to make a difference with humanity at large.  And they want to help prevent the world from depleting its resources before they might bring their own children onto the global stage. 

It’s easy to dismiss this as naïve idealism, but we shouldn’t.  And it isn’t narcissism either, because the aspirations of these young people pulsate with a desire to give, not just to receive.  

What should we do about that?

Love, Not Conquest: A Lesson for All Religions from the Boston Bombings

As Dzhokhar Tsarnaev recovers in a Boston Hospital, he has confessed to the planting of the bombs that killed 3 and injured hundreds during the recent Boston marathon.   The suffering of those injured is extraordinary and ongoing.  The pain of the families whose loved ones were killed is unimaginable.  We also now know that the brothers were planning a trip to New York City, to detonate bombs in Time Square.

More and more is being revealed about the way Dzhokhar’s older brother, Tamerlan, was introduced, starting in 2008, to a form of radical, anti-American Islam back in the family’s native Chechniya and recent investigations suggest that there may have been local influences as well.

Muslim leaders in various Boston mosques were asked whether they would hold a funeral for Tamerlan.  An imam from the Islamic Institute of Boston said, “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.” (Huffington Post, picked up by US News, April 24, 2013) 

Often in the Jewish community, we see a reaction of great embarrassment when people suspected and convicted of crimes are discovered to be Jewish.  There was widespread disgust when Bernie Madoff was convicted of Ponzi scheme fraud and when Baruch Goldstein was found to have shot 29 worshippers at a Mosque in Hebron. 

The Boston bombing is tragic and devastating.  While life in Boston will go on, the attacks have irrevocably altered the lives of the families of the victims and the dynamics of the community as a whole. 

I’m heartened that Muslim leaders are expressing disgust at the crimes to which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is confessing.  Ideally this should spark continued cheshbon hanefesh, soul-searching, on the part of the Muslim community.

We should not generalize about the Muslim community any more than we would want people to generalize about the Jewish community based on the actions of Bernie Madoff, Baruch Goldstein and others.

But I do expect my Muslim colleagues to say something like, “This behavior does not represent us.  It does not represent our view of Islam!” I hope that institutions such as the Islamic Center in Boston will make explicit that terrorism has no place in Islam. 

Because the stakes are really high.  Future human lives are at stake.  To the extent that the appropriation of Islam to justify brutal terror goes unchecked, we will see more and more victims killed and struggling to piece their bodies and their lives back together.

I believe the future of religion is at stake, as well, and this has profound implications for the future of human life.

Will the 21^st century see, once and for all, the demise of religion as a force for good in the world?  Will the religion of conquest emerge victorious?

I think about that, and we should all think about that.  Will today’s bar mitzvah, and his sisters and his friends, think that religion is basically about defeating the enemy in God’s name – I conquer and kill in the name of my God – because those who are practicing religion in this way are so loud and so relentless?  

Our task is no less than to demonstrate, within these walls and beyond, that religion can be a force for good.  That it can cultivate a sense of wonder, a sense of humility, and a sense of responsibility. 

That religion should ultimately be about love and not conquest.