No More Sarcasm - Just Like That

In the scene from “The Frisco Kid” that has been frequently circulated on social media since the death of Gene Wilder a few weeks ago, the Polish rabbi, played by Wilder, is asked by a Native American chief if his god can make it rain. 

Gene Wilder and Val Bisoglio, "The Frisco Kid"

“He can do ANYTHING!”  Exclaims the rabbi.

“Then why can’t he make rain?” Asks the chief.

“Because He doesn’t make rain.  He gives us strength when we’re suffering.  He gives us compassion when all that we feel is hatred.

“He gives us courage when we’re searching around blindly like little mice in the darkness.   BUT HE DOESN’T MAKE RAIN.”

All of a sudden a clap of thunder is heard and it starts to pour. 

“Of course,” says the rabbi, “sometimes - just like that - He’ll change his mind.”

Today is Rosh Hodesh Elul.  During this month we are supposed to make a very special effort at heshbon hanefesh – looking at ourselves, wondering what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, what changes we might like to make.

It’s interesting that we’re not asked during this month to try to understand God better.   But I do think that there’s a marvelous teaching that helps us to understand what God’s role might be in helping us to look within and do what’s right.

It’s expressed in the very first verse of Parashat Re'eh – ראה אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה re’ei anokhi noten lif’nekhhem hayom brakha uk’lala – today I set before you a blessing and a curse. 

The verse establishes a framework for honoring and challenging our capacity to choose how we live our lives.  So here we are, beginning the month that leads right into Rosh Hashanah, and I want us to get off on the right foot.  I'm going to get philosophical and practical.  

I want us to think about what needs to go on inside of us in order for us to make positive changes.  In a moment I will use an issue I personally have started to work on as an example.

Pray for My Father

On Monday, August 22, I joined with a group of rabbis for a condolence call.  It was the first condolence call I'd paid to a Muslim family. 

On August 13, Maulama Akonjee, an imam in the Bangladeshi community in Ozone Park, was shot and killed, along with his associate, Thara Uddin, while walking home from religious services dressed in religious garb.

The New York Board of Rabbis (NYBR), which I serve as an officer, contacted the family and asked if they could bring a group of clergy – rabbis and Christian clergy as well – to offer condolences, and the family agreed.

So I drove to the family’s house and stood outside with the other clergy until we were ushered in.  We sat in the living room.  Two of the imam’s sons came out to sit with us, accompanied by other family members, one of whom helped with translation.  (The imam’s sons came to New York from Bangladesh just a few years ago and their English is not yet fully fluent.)

The sons sat quietly as several of the clergy, including NYBR Executive Director Rabbi Joe Potasnik, spoke.   When asked, the sons told a bit about their father – that he was a peaceful man, that he wanted his community to commit themselves to regular prayer and good deeds.

Rabbi Joe Potasnik with a group of clergy at the Akonjee home

A representative from the NYPD, a Muslim, chanted verses in Arabic that are traditionally recited in a house of mourning.  Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl, senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in Manhattan and also a cantor, led us in the singing of the 23^rd psalm.  Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale offered a blessing to the imam’s sons.   The oldest son said it was the first time he had spoken with a group of Jews. 

As we were about to leave, we each had the opportunity to offer personal condolences to the sons.  I said a few words to the oldest son.  He offered me a hug and he said quietly, “pray for my father.”

Justice Includes Jews: Thoughts About Black Lives Matter, Jews and Justice

I want to talk about the recent Black Lives Matter statements about Israel for two reasons:  First, this is an issue many of us have been reading about, and are likely passionate about.  Second, it challenges us to navigate a complex political dynamic, to oppose injustice toward others while also insuring justice for ourselves.

Here are some relevant facts and some context:

Black Lives Matter  - an organization launched, according to its website, in 2012 - has sought to advocate in multiple realms for just treatment of people of color.  

At the beginning of August 2016, the organization refined and presented a platform that includes several sections, including:  End the war on black people, Reparations, Invest/Divest, Economic justice, Community control and Political power.

Individual elements within these sections include advocacy for universal health care, fighting climate change and a reallocation of funds from policing and incarcation to education, justice services and employment programs. 

In the Invest/divest section is included the topic of cutting military expenditures, in which the United State is criticized for using excessive funds on its military in order to expand territory and power.  

In that topic, under that section, are several statements pertaining to United States support of Israel.   Here’s the one that was deemed most offensive by a wide political spectrum within the Jewish community:

“ The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” 

Some more context.  Numerous Jewish leaders have worked with the Black Lives Matter movement to protest unfair treatment of African Americans in this country.

Most Jewish organizations, right-wing to left, including those who have collaborated with the Black Lives Matter movement, were angered by these statements and for very good reason.  The statements are distorted, false and incendiary.  Several Jews of color have criticized the platform for being anti-Semitic.  Rabbis across the political spectrum have denounced the statements.

I saw some attempts to defend the statement about genocide on the basis that the authors were using the word differently, to indicate extreme discrimination rather than wholesale murder, but neither that nor any other interpretations were satisfactory to most Jewish leaders, and for good reason. 

Along with the vast majority of Jewish leaders, I say unequivocally that to call the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis a genocide is libelous and anti-Semitic. 

I want to identify two pitfalls that the Jewish community can fall into, neither of which are acceptable, and a possible third approach.

The Past Won't Shut Up: A Brief Tale of Two European Cities

Toward the end of the fourth book of the Torah, we read once again the long list of places that our ancestors stopped through on their way from Egypt to the promised land.  It’s a part of the Torah that gets us thinking about passing through different places, and a nice backdrop for me to reflect on a few of the places that Deanna and I passed through this summer.

But I’d like this to be more than a travel-log.  What emerged for me, especially in visiting some of the places in Europe that we saw recently, is a sense of the strong pull that the past exerts on the present.  Europe has strong resonance with the past.  You walk the streets of its cities and towns and you get pulled in, and pulled back, and it makes you wonder about how these places will continue to respond to current challenges.

So passing through inevitably leads to looking back as much as it leads to looking around.

And with no further intro, here’s my “tale of two cities."  I will in the future reflect on my time in Israel this summer, but today I’m going to take us to two of several cities that we visited in northern Europe - Copenhagen, Denmark and Berlin, Germany.

We spent a full day in Copenhagen on my birthday, actually.  Beautiful city, resonant with history but also in many ways future-oriented.  A city focused on reducing its collective carbon footprint – far more bicycles than cars in the city center, for example.  A city focused on broadening economic opportunity – universal health care coverage, fully subsidized university tuition. 

Inside the courtyard of Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen 

We decided to take a walking tour.  The tour-guide was a young Danish man named Magnus who spoke excellent English and was very well-informed. 

Fathers Can't Flake Out

In the aftermath of the Orlando shootings, there is much that needs to be said and done.  Among other things, I want to affirm my own belief, as a father, as a Jew, as a rabbi, that the sexual orientations and gender identities of our children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews have no bearing on the unassailable, bedrock truth that they, we, all of us, are all human beings equally valuable, equally endowed with a divine spark.

I will go further and say that as a rabbi, in the context of the recent rulings of the Conservative movement and the United States Supreme court, I will do my best to be present to help sanctify the marriages of all Jewish couples, regardless of their genders, who ask me to participate.  Moreover, although as a Conservative rabbi I do not officiate at interfaith weddings, I will do whatever I can to help welcome interfaith couples into our community, regardless of their genders, and to encourage them to bring Jewish tradition into their lives and their homes.  

Now I want to move away from the rabbi piece and talk a bit about being a father. I want to talk to all the fathers who are here, since today is technically “Erev Father’s Day.”

Fathers can’t shirk the obligations of being a father.  We can’t use work as an excuse, we can’t use exhaustion as an excuse, we can’t use confusion as an excuse, we can’t use fear as an excuse, we can’t use “mom will take care of it” as an excuse, even if mom takes care of a whole lot.

When Confusion Is a Sin

I planned this message before the Orlando shootings occurred.  They occurred the day before I delivered the message and proved tragically relevant to the theme.  I referred to the shootings briefly in the moment and I'm including a paragraph which I subsequently added (along with the photo) to reflect what I said.  

We’re months away from the high holidays but I want to start with a reference to Yom Kippur.  On Yom Kippur we confess to a whole bunch of sins – most of them make complete sense.  One in particular, I always found curious. 

על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בתמהון לבב Al het shehatanu lefanekha b’tim’hon levav.  We confess for the sin which we committed through confusion of mind.

What’s so wrong with being confused? 

God knows, there are many situations that are legitimately confusing, where we are considering competing needs, or weighing competing values.  In such situations we may do well to admit to some confusion, even ambivalence.

But there are situations that are so clear that a response of confusion of mind, tim’hon levav, is a sin.  Situations where anything other than a clear, unequivocal response is a travesty.

I’m going to discuss some unpleasant but important topics this morning that illustrate the sin of tim’hon levav with reference to Shavuot and these upcoming moments of Yizkor.

A Lesson from Harambe: The Issues are Usually Bigger Than We Think

A 17-year old gorilla named Harambe was killed in a zoo in Cincinnati because it was felt that he posed a danger to a little boy.  The boy had climbed over a pretty short wall and fallen a considerable distance into the area where the gorilla lived.   

The mother of the boy, who had lost sight of him temporarily after he said "I want to swim with the gorilla," was quite scared as you might imagine when she saw the gorilla scooping the child up and carrying him a bit.  It's all on video which you can watch, if you haven't seen it yet.  The mother called 911 and the zoo officials made a quick decision to shoot the animal dead. 

Reactions ran the gamut.  People said the mother was at fault for not supervising her child more carefully.  People said the zoo was at fault for not having a high enough barrier or that they were at fault for deciding to kill the animal, rather than stun the animal. 

On Wednesday, one of our sons texted his brother and me that they would try to use the story of the gorilla to help me write my sermon.  What followed was a brief back and forth of collaboration and I present the fruits of that collaboration as tribute to Harambe, a magnificent animal whose name means "pulling together" in Swahili.   

The incident at the Cincinnati zoo suggested to us that people are quick to place blame for specific situations, but not so willing to step back and ask the larger questions about what allows such situations to happen.