Morning with President Shimon Peres

Deanna and I joined over 200 members of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization for Conservative rabbis, to hear Israeli President Shimon Peres. Here we are, standing outside the President's house in Jerusalem, before we entered to hear him:

Peres, whose recent 90th birthday celebration included tributes by Bill Clinton and Barbara Streisand, approached the podium after a soaring introduction by RA President Gerald Skolnik.  

The President spoke about the importance of Israel being guided by Jewish values such as equality and intellectual curiosity.  He urged that the success of a democracy hinges upon protecting people's rights to be different.  

Peres has long been a champion of peace against great odds and despite significant opposition.  No one can accuse him, at ninety, of being a naive upstart.  Rather, with decades of experience behind him and an impressive degree of energy still, he presents as an indefatigable optimist.  Deanna and I were inspired by the content and manner of his presentation, as were my colleagues, who gave him a robust standing ovation when he was finished speaking.

In response to a question about conversion standards, Peres told a story about Ben Gurion's meeting with Charles de Gaulle a few years after Israel was established.  De Gaulle asked Ben Gurion to share with him his profoundest dream for the State of Israel.  More land, perhaps?  More resources?  Ben Gurion didn't hesitate.  He told the President of France that he dreams about one thing, and one thing only, for Medinat Yisra'el.  More Jews.  He told De Gaulle that he believed that Jews would leave America, France and Russia in great numbers.

"Now that so many Jews have finally arrived from Russia, decades after Ben Gurion's remarks," said Peres, "shouldn't we figure out how best to welcome them as Jews?"

In Peres's presence, my colleague, Rabbi Mauricio Balter, offered the blessing that one recites when seeing a major leader.  The sentiments of the blessing have certainly taken root in lifelong visionary leader, President Shimon Peres.

ברוך אתה ה’ אלהינו מלך העולם אשר נתן מכבודו לבשר ודם

Praised are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has given Divine glory to flesh and blood.

Confronting Our Inner Korach - Reflections on the Celebrate Israel Parade

The rabbi of a synagogue comes down with the flu.  He calls the president and says he can’t attend that night’s board meeting.

The next morning, the president calls the rabbi.  He tells him the meeting went well.  And in fact, the board wishes him r’fuah shleima, a complete recovery.

That’s so nice, says the rabbi.

Yes it is, says the president.  And by the way, the vote was 20 to 18. 

Now in my head, right now, I hear my college professor who taught us Aristophanes’ comedy, the Frogs, saying to me, “Kiddo – don’t try to explain a joke.  Either it flies or it fails, but don’t try to explain it!”

Well, professor, I’m going to just take a minute to talk about the joke for the sake of a higher purpose.

First, a board of 38 is too large so of course you’ll have problems. Second, I wonder if Episcopalians tell such a joke about their ministers or Muslims about their imams.  Is there something especially Jewish about the joke or is it applicable to any religious institution?

In a Jewish context, it somehow captures the sweet, yet sometimes idiosyncratic relationship between rabbis and congregations, though each rabbi likes to think that his or her numbers are more favorable than those in the joke.

It also takes as a given that there are always detractors, people who have issues with whomever or whatever is in place. 

And, one wonders, might such people be able to separate the ideological from the personal?  Leading to a prayer not unlike the prayer for the czar in Fiddler on the Roof, “May God give the rabbi a full recovery far away from here.”

This week, we read about the rebellion of a classic detractor named Korach, a Levite who gathered a bunch of people with him and challenged Moses and Aaron’s authority with a statement and a question.

Sometimes the Danger is Real: Crossing a Threshold in Hungary

Every year, Jews the world over read about the 10 scouts who entered the land and brought back sample of its fruits, along with a negative report.  They said that while the land is flowing with milk and honey, it is nevertheless impenetrable.  ארץ אוכלת יושביה  A land that consumes its inhabitants.

And I suspect that most people speaking about this reading will say something negative about the scouts who gave the negative report.  They lacked faith.  They lacked hope.

I’m pretty sure that most of the times that I’ve spoken about this story, that’s what I’ve done.  I’ve been sharply critical of the 10 scouts who bring back fruit from the land but say “let’s steer clear of the place” and I’ve spoken about the positive virtues of hope and faith.

But this time, I want to say that sometimes the people who say “there’s serious danger and let’s not downplay it or overstate our ability to overcome it” - sometimes those people have a point.  

The Washington Post recently wrote an article about the Hungarian government under Prime Minister Victor Orban, a right-wing nationalist.  The article criticized constitutional changes that Orban’s government has made which include restrictions on free speech and funding only those religions that collaborate with the state for the public interest.

A colleague forwarded me a video about disturbing trends in Hungary that contained a clip of a leader of a far-right party advocating, as part of a discussion about Israel, that Jews in Hungary be registered as such on a special list.  

A Jewish professor who was interviewed, an 80 year old woman whose father was killed in Auschwitz and who lives in Budapest, said she was deeply disturbed by the fact that a party leader would say such a thing in parliament. To his friends at a social gathering is one thing.  But to advocate in parliament for the forced registration of Jews?  That, as she put it, crossed a threshold. 

And once you cross such a threshold, she observed, a dangerous momentum comes into play.

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.

Empathy Holds Us Together: a Message for Yom Hashoah and All Year Long

On March 21 of this year, Rabbi Herschel Schacter died at the age of 96.  Rabbi Schacter had a long career as a pulpit rabbi in the Moshulu Jewish Center in the Bronx.

But he is even more widely known as the first Jewish chaplain to enter Buchenwald following its liberation by General Patton in April, 1945. 

When he entered, he asked if there were any Jews still alive and was taken to a barracks of Jewish inmates, lying on planks.  They looked down at Rabbi Schacter, in military uniform, and they were frightened. 

He said, Shalom Aleichem, yidden.  Ihr sint frei.  Greetings, Jews.  You are free!

And slowly, slowly, people began to absorb the significance of what had happened.  And some started to join Rabbi Schacter, going from one barracks to the other, telling one another that they were now free.

Weeks later, it was Pesach Sheni, the second Pesach, the day set aside in ancient times for those who were unable to celebrate Pesach during its ordinary time.

According to an account by a prisoner of the camp, Shiku Smilovic, Rabbi Schacter brought matzah and distributed it to everyone.  He started to deliver a sermon to all of the recently liberated prisoners.  At one point, the rabbi said, “We know what you have gone through” and a former prisoner started to scream.