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.

We Get to Tell Our Loyalty Story

I want to talk this morning about loyalty and the Jewish people. Starting in the past, commenting on the present, and looking toward the future.  

You may recall that Moses had a very instructive conversation with the two and a half of the tribes of Israel. They tell Moses they do not want to cross over the Jordan to the west with everyone else כי באה נחלתנו אלינו מעבר לירדן מזרחה kee ba’ah nahalateinu eleinu me’ever layarden va’hal’ah - because our portion is on the eastern part of the Jordan.

And Moses says to them:  האחיכם יבואו למלחמה ואתם תשבו פה Ha’ahikhem yavo’u lamilhamah v’atem teshvu po?  Will your brothers go off to fight while you stay here?  Moreover, you will discourage the rest of the Israelites from passing over the Jordan.

How dare you act in such a way that denies your responsibilities to the rest of the people and actively discourages them?

Moses is angry.  You could say that he is accusing these leaders of not being sufficiently loyal to the rest of the people. However, it doesn’t end there.  The leaders say to him, we will settle our wives, children and livestock east of the Jordan.  Then we will cross over and fight alongside the rest of the tribes as they conquer the land.  Only after that effort has been successful will we return and fully settle down.

Moses is pleased with the response.  Following his ardent critique, the two and a half tribes come up with a compromise solution which Moses accepts.

Here are three reasons why the Biblical exchange differs from recent events, reasons that I hope will be instructive for us as we navigate the current climate:

Being Who We Are Called To Be

I was recently sitting on a train heading into the city, wearing the kippah I always wear.  A woman who seemed to be in her 20’s was sitting in front of me, turned around, and said, "Excuse me. Are you Jewish?" And I asked, "Why do you want to know?" She said, "I see you’re wearing one of those coverings.  I wondered if you could tell me about them and why Jewish people wear them."  

TIGN 2019 Teen Trip Meeting with Muslim Students at Givat Haviva

So I told her about my kippah, about humility, recognizing a higher power.  She told me that her godparents in Ireland are Jewish (she is originally from England and moved to Ireland), how much she loves celebrating Passover with them.  We spoke about kippot and hijabs, about various religious and how they bring good and bad into the world.


I realized during that train ride that like it or not, I was serving as an ambassador for Jews in general, although she already knew Jews, and observant Jews specifically.  Many of us find ourselves “representing Jewish people” at one time or another. And when that happens, we probably want to make a good impression.

It is normal and understandable - in encounters small and large - for us as people in general and as Jews specifically to want to make a good impression.

This Land is Also Your Land

Deanna and I recently spent a week up in Vermont with our son and his girlfriend.  Our son, who works in a vineyard, spent the week supervising a group of workers who came to the US from Bhutan.  

In speaking with some of them and doing some of his own research, he discovered that this group left Bhutan due to persecution.  They were persecuted because they came to Bhutan from Nepal a few generations ago and were never fully accepted as Bhutanese.  

So they left Bhutan and came to the US, settling primarily in Vermont and Ohio.

"You’re not one of us, you don’t belong, get out of here, go back to where you came from."  

These are familiar thoughts, familiar comments.  This makes them no no less pernicious, but they are familiar.

They surely are familiar to Jews. You come from somewhere else.  You have dual loyalty.  You are not one of us.  

Using our experience, I want to urge us to consider what it means when one person decides to tell another person, or a group, this is not your home.  You don’t belong.  Go back to where you came from.  And how we as Jews should respond and position ourselves when such things are said.

We Tell Our Stories to Make the World Better

NY Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez caused an uproar recently by referring to the situation at the southern border of the United States as follows:

Elie Wiesel speaking at Yad Vashem in 2008

” The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you...I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that we should not — that ‘Never Again’ means something.”

As we know, this sparked a heated response, and then a heated response to the response.