Present in the Present

I’ve told this story before but I was thinking about it again recently.  Our oldest son was born when we were living in Riverdale, along with many other rabbinical students.  The day after they came home from the hospital, Deanna asked if I could go down to the nearby pharmacy and get some diapers.  

I said sure, and then I started to get emotional and I said, you may think this is crazy, but I started to imagine standing with our son under the chupah and wondering what I would say.

And she said, that’s beautiful. And then she said, please go down to the story and get diapers.  The smallest size they have.

It’s fun to dream about the future and it can be illuminating to reflect on the past.

However, I believe that many of us, from time to time, find that we prevent ourselves from appreciating the blessings and the opportunities of whatever moment we are in.  

If you have ever catapulted yourself out of the present by rushing toward the future, or getting stuck in the past, these next few words are for you.

I’ll use myself as an example in the hope that you can relate.

Effective Thoughts and Prayers

Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, skirted Florida, and continued northward near the Atlantic coast.

Marianne Williamson, presidential candidate and self-help author, wrote the following tweet once the storm turned course away from the Florida coast.

"The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas...may all be in our prayers now. Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

Hours later she deleted that tweet and replaced it with the following:

"Prayers for the people of the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. May the peace of God be upon him and their hearts be comforted as they endure the storm.”

I don’t know if she realized herself the deeply problematic nature of her original tweet.  She was implying, it seems, that it was powerful, collective thinking that resulted in the hurricane turning away from making landfall in Florida. It might have hit Florida, but powerful prayer, visualization, meditation, shifted it away.

Someone responded to her first tweet with the following, I’m paraphrasing:  I guess the prayers, visualization and meditation of the people in the Bahamas just weren’t good enough.

The original tweet presents a spiritual approach, a theology, that, to me ear, frankly, is self-congratulatory and deeply offensive.

If you escape natural disaster, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.  By implication, if you escape medical catastrophe, it’s because you said or thought the right thing.

And if you don’t escape those things, it means you didn’t think or pray right by God?

So much guilt and spiritual suffering has been inflicted on people by adding theological insult to physical, medical and emotional injury.

Confronting Our Own Prejudices

On Tuesday, August 27, Rabbi Avraham Gopin was exercising in a park in Brooklyn and was assaulted by someone with a brick, knocking his teeth out and injuring his face.  This is the latest in a string of violence against Orthodox Jews in New York. 

Rabbi Avraham Gopin, attacked on August 27, 2019

A day after the assault, Avital Chizkik Goldschmidt, a self-identifying Orthodox Jew who writes for the Forward, wrote an article entitled, “Why Does No One Care About Violence Against Orthodox Jews?”

She observes in her article that the response to these antisemitic hate crimes so far has been insufficient both by the city administration and by the organized Jewish community, with the exception of the ADL who are offering a significant reward for any information about the perpetrator.  

She goes on to write that in the liberal circles where she often finds herself professionally, where all kinds of discrimination is appropriately opposed, she routinely hears slurs about Orthodox Jews.