Category: Jewish Ethics

Have We Learned Anything?

I cannot sleep.

I was a little girl when the Cuban Missile Crisis scared the wits out of us. I was in second grade, and I still remember kneeling in the hallway of Overbook School as Sister Mary Martin led us in the rosary. I remember my knees grinding into the floor as I recited the responses. I remember my relief — our national relief — when Mr Krushchev turned his ships around and the threat of nuclear war receded.

When I heard the President threatening North Korea today, snarling like a teenage boy intent on winning a game of chicken, I had to wonder where he was in 1962.

Tonight as I said my bedtime Shema I asked the Holy One to spare us. Not only us, but all the people living in range of a nightmare: the children of South Korea, of Japan, of Guam, of anywhere the North Korean missiles (and any other missiles!) can reach.

A few years ago I had the honor of getting to know a woman who grew up in Fukuoka, Japan during World War II. Fukuoka is 280 km from Hiroshima, and 153 km from Nagasaki. Her home was between the two bombs we dropped on Japan. Later, during the occupation of Japan, she married a G.I. and moved to Georgia.

I did not plan to ask Mairi about her experience in the war. She was very elderly and did not need curious questions. I was only a friend helping out for a few weeks while her son had to be away. But one day something came on TV that reminded her of the bombs and she began to talk about it. I will never forget the pain in her voice, talking about the things she had seen.

And yes, I know that the Japanese had done terrible things in the war. I know Mr Truman felt it was better to drop those bombs. I suspect he had no idea of the horror it would set loose on civilians, things that would haunt survivors to the end of their days.

Now that we know, and we know that the weapons in our arsenals are much, much worse, how can we think of using them? And how could our President think that taunting the North Korean dictator, a man who seems to care little for the welfare of his own people, is a good idea?

I have to wonder: have we learned nothing?

Hashkiveinu, Adonai, Eloheinu l’shalom, v’ha’amideinu malkeinu l’chaim. Ufros aleinu sukkat sh’lomecha, v’tak’neinu b’eitza tova mil’fanecha. 

Let us lie down, O Holy One, our Ruler, in peace, and raise us up, our Sovereign, to life. Spread over us the shelter of Your peace, and guide us with Your good counsel. — from Hashkiveinu, the prayer for peaceful rest.

“Guide us with your good counsel” — Yes, guide the leaders of our world, help them to see the paths of peace. Give them wisdom, and give them the courage it takes to step back from the brink.

We ask this of You, who knows the hearts of each of us, and we ask it for the sale of your Name. Amen.

Social Duty or Spiritual Discipline?

Image: “THANK YOU” written by a fountain pen. Artwork: marcelmajid/pixabay.

This has been a challenging summer. On May 1 I got really, really sick. On June 30 my mother died. Through it all, people have been very kind to me, understanding about cancelled classes, sending sweet notes, and supporting my local family through shiva and mourning. I realized anew what a remarkable and loving support system we have in our congregation, Temple Sinai, and in an extended “family of choice” who have been rocks for me and Linda.

Now I’m working my way through the thank-you notes, which is something I learned from my mother. Her lessons did not cover social media, but I decided that if someone reached out via social media, it was appropriate to say “thank you” through that medium. Real visits, real cards and letters, and real food require more than email, though: for those I’ve been writing traditional thank-you notes.

As I’ve been writing them, I’ve had a chance to reflect on something I never noticed before: thank-you notes have a function beyond saying “thank you.” That’s their main job, of course, but I have benefitted from taking time to go down the list and reflect briefly on what someone did for me before I have written them a note. This one sent a note from vacation – how kind, to take time out from vacation! Another sent over food, and was careful to observe my dietary needs, which are complicated since May.  Yet another sent me photographs she thought I’d enjoy, from when my own children were little – how thoughtful! A busy colleague, a solo rabbi in a congregation, took time out to write words of comfort tailored just to me, and I know he has so little time.

All of these provided comfort when they first arrived. Now, as I write the notes, they provide more, since I am less in shock and more in a place to appreciate the care and thought. The thank-you notes are forcing me to pay attention to the people who took time to send me affection.

These little notes that I wrote so dutifully as a child and as a young woman are now much, much more than a duty. They are an opportunity to learn many important things, not least of which is that I have much for which to be grateful.

Thus I have begun to understand that thank-you notes are a spiritual discipline. They are not exciting to write, far from it, and they can be positively annoying when I cannot find an address. But there is a huge benefit from going down the list, from note to note, writing a few every day, inscribing the envelope, thinking what to say, even slowing down so my penmanship is legible.

Human relationships are holy. That is one of the great messages of Torah, that every encounter is a potential moment for holiness. Rabbeinu Bachya ibn Pekuda, a great medieval teacher of ethics, taught that to cultivate an awareness of the presence and goodness of God, we should be mindful of the kindnesses done to us by other human beings and take special care to say “thank you” for those kindnesses. This tiny preliminary step is critical for our spiritual development according to Bachya.

In a few weeks we will begin the month of Elul, the annual month of soul-searching and repair of regrets. Perhaps this year we can also make it a month of gratitude, a month of thank-you notes, a month of growth.

Spiritual Awakening

Image: Sunrise. (pixabay, public domain)

If you think I am writing this to you, yes, I am.

If you think I am writing this about you, yes, I am.

If you think this has nothing to do with you, well, I tried.

!קוּמִי אוֹרִי, כִּי בָא אוֹרֵךְ; וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה, עָלַיִךְ זָרָח

Arise, shine, because your light has come, and the glory of the Holy One will rise upon you! – Isaiah 60:1

We are in a time for spiritual awakening.

Mind you, I’m not claiming that many of us (any of us?) are awake. What I see around me are sleepers, myself included.

We are tempted to read Isaiah 60 as a triumphal psalm, because it speaks so firmly of good things to come, but we must not lose track of verse 2:

For, look, darkness will cover the earth, and fog [upon] the nations; but upon you the Holy One will rise, and the honor of the Eternal shall be seen upon you. – Isaiah 50:2

Never forget that Isaiah speaks as a prophet. He calls us to notice those things we do not want to see. It is very dangerous to assume that because I am [insert category here] that I am one of the people who will eventually be elevated in honor.

We are in a time of trouble, a dark night of the soul. The very climate is disrupted. Everyone (myself included!) point at scapegoats (Trump! Obama! Conservatives! Liberals! Islamists! Terrorists! Lazy people! Greedy people! Rich people! Politicians! The media! Social media! Parents! Kids these days!) Very few take responsibility, least of all me.

Isaiah 60 goes on to tell us that:

Up to now you has been forsaken and hated, so that no one passed you, I will exalt you forever, joy from generation to generation. – Isaiah 60:15

So let’s ask ourselves, honestly: to whom is Isaiah speaking? Is Isaiah talking to me, or is he warning me that someday the people I have forsaken and mistreated will be lifted up, no matter how I disdain them? In his own day, I believe Isaiah was talking to the people of Israel, people who had lost everything, people who had lost their homes, lost many loved ones, and who had been dragged off to work in other people’s houses. Am I one of those people now – or am I their oppressor?

To whatever degree I have benefitted from the sufferings of others, I should take Isaiah 60 as a warning. Is the security in my world provided by threatening the dignity of someone else? Is the peace of my neighborhood sustained by policing that targets someone else?  Are my taxes lower because there is stuff I simply don’t want to pay for, and devil take the unfortunate who needs what I won’t buy? Is my own sense of self-worth bolstered by looking down on someone else who lacks my education, my facility with language, or my abilities? Is my righteous attitude supported by a lack of empathy for someone different from me?

As long as I am preoccupied with pointing elsewhere with blame, I am part of the problem. As long as I am unwilling to look into the face of the person utterly different from me and try to love them, I am part of the problem. As long as I refuse to look in the mirror and take responsibility for the behavior of the person I see there, nothing will get better.

What if I were willing to look into the face of the stranger and search out the spark of the Divine?

What if They are not wrong about everything? What if I am not right about everything?

There are those who will say, “They started it. They won’t listen. They are ignorant fools. They will just take advantage and then where will we be?” That is the voice of fear, and from what I can tell, we have been listening to it at least since September 11, 2001, and truly much longer that that. What has it accomplished?

It is time for something new. It is time to listen. It is time to reach out. It is time for compassion and risk-taking.

But how else will we wake from this nightmare?

We are in a time for spiritual awakening. The question is, will we wake up?

This song, “It Won’t Take Long” by Ferron is my alarm clock:

Insurance and Jewish Ethics

Image: Me, at the LGBTQ March in Oakland in 2016. “Betzelem Elohim” means “In the image of God”  – human life is a reflection of the Divine One. Photo by Linda Burnett.

I’m sitting in my neighborhood pharmacy waiting for a prescription. I’ve been here an hour and I’m likely to remain here for several more. The insurance company thinks the drug my doctor ordered is too pricey. Last Friday I lost the argument and began taking the drug the insurance company wanted. Today my hemotologist said I’m on the wrong drug and we started over.

Confused? Yes, I was too. My doctor’s office is fussing with the insuror now and I’m hanging tight in the pharmacy. They wanted me to go home, and I politely explained that my next dose of blood thinner is due at 9pm and I will continue to wait because I am not going to take one more dose of the Wrong Blasted Drug.

I really was polite, because I know this is not the clerk’s fault.

Mind you, I have “excellent” insurance. My wife is a retired federal employee. This is happening on good insurance. (And how much the moreso for those with minimal insurance? Or no insurance?)

The problem, it seems, is that the correct drug will cut into profits too much. My life was put at risk last Friday because Heaven forbid my survival interfere with Health Net’s shareholders’ profits. I am not overstating this or being hysterical; my doc is angry, too.

I was originally educated as an economist: I have a B.A. and all the coursework for an M.A. in Economics. I am not ignorant about capitalism. But when capitalism and its profit motives take precedence over human life, we have gone off the deep end and out to sea.

As I wrote in an earlier post, Judaism teaches that it is wrong to value profit over human life. I sit here in the pharmacy and meditate on that inconvenient fact.

Update, May 10: I am exhausted, and have gone home to wait. I had no idea I could be this mad at the same time I am completely exhausted. 

Here’s the kicker- I was not the only person waging this particular battle this afternoon at that same pharmacy. Different drug, exactly the same story. 

I am ashamed to say that I was already acquainted in a purely academic sense with this phenomenon before today. What I lacked was the visceral experience of being the person who can’t get an essential drug because my life isn’t worth it to some bean counter.

I understand that we can’t all have everything we want when we want it. What I don’t understand is why someone’s wallet is ahead in line of me and other sick people.

Update, May 11, 6pm: Health Net has finally approved my treatment after an extensive argument. Whew.

Your Money or Your Life – Why the AHCA is Contrary to Torah

Image: President Trump meets with lawmakers at the White House in March, 2017, to discuss replacement for the Affordable Care Act. Public Domain.

I was in a hospital bed when I heard the news that the so-called American Health Care Act had passed in the House of Representatives.  I had nothing to do but read, so I read everything I could about it.  Here’s what I know for sure:

  1. We don’t know exactly how many people will be affected, and neither do the people who voted for the bill. Speaker Ryan saw fit to push the bill through before it could be scored by the Congressional Budget Office.  What we do know is that an earlier version of the bill would have reduced the number of people with health coverage by 14 million in 2018, 21 million in 2020, and 24 million in 2026. That version of the bill was rejected by the super-conservative Freedom Caucus representatives as being “too liberal.” It seems fair to expect that this bill will negatively affect at least as many people.
  2. If a person doesn’t have health insurance, their ability to get medical care except for emergency room care is practically nil.  I have done the research on this myself. Back in the bad old days before I could marry Linda, back when I was on my own for health insurance, I often couldn’t get health insurance because I had pre-existing conditions. When I called a doctor’s office and said I would pay cash, that didn’t matter – they wouldn’t take me unless I had health insurance. I can understand that – what is the doctor supposed to do if I turn out to have something serious, something I can’t pay for out of pocket?
  3. It is true that if a person doesn’t have health insurance, they will be seen in the emergency room. However, all the hospital is responsible to do is to stabilize the person who lacks health insurance. ER care is the most expensive care there is, so ER’s can’t absorb the cost of non-life-threatening illness. Which brings me to the last thing:
  4. Bad health insurance coverage affects everyone, not just the person stuck with the lousy policy. In 2013, before “Obamacare,” medical bills were the biggest cause of bankruptcies in the United States. The most affordable health insurance policies had such high deductibles and covered so few things that even people with policies wound up in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that someone is broke, but it also means that many of the people they owe money to will never be paid. Also, who pays for people to go to the ER if they don’t have health insurance? Those expenses wind up driving up health care costs for everyone.

Was Obamacare, more properly called the Affordable Care Act, the answer? The ACA had a lot of problems, just as Medicare had a lot of problems when it first passed in the 1960’s. It needed improvements. But simply taking care away from people isn’t the answer.

However, none of this is the WORST thing about the American Health Care Act. Obamacare raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans in order to provide healthcare for millions of Americans; the AHCA reverses that. It provides a huge tax cut to high-income Americans by providing less health care to people with pre-existing conditions. It penalizes sick people to put money in other people’s pockets. (Full disclosure: I’m probably one of the people would will get a tax cut under this bill.)

There are those who say that this is “being realistic.” I say it is a sin, the worst sort of sin. It says that some lives simply aren’t worth the bucks, specifically aren’t worth an extra couple of thousand in the pocket of a person who already has a lot. It says that other lives are worth the bucks because their family has disposable income. It values lives according to their bank accounts.

Jewish tradition teaches us that almost nothing is more important than saving a life. Specifically, the only higher commandments than saving a life are the commandments against murder, incest, or idolatry. 

I say it is idolatry when we take away health care to line the pockets of the wealthy. I don’t like paying taxes any more than the next person, but Judaism teaches me that I may not make an idol of anything, including money. I may not value it over human life, even the life of a person I don’t like, or disapprove of, or even someone who has hurt me.

This evil bill, the American Health Care Act, is not yet law. It still has to go through the Senate, where God willing it will be stopped. I believe I have a moral obligation to fight it with every power at my disposal: to write letters, to make phone calls, to make it clear to the senators that I do not want a tax cut that will kill people.

Despite the popular fantasy that all illness is avoidable, much illness is NOT avoidable. Bad things happen to good people. The AHCA is murder for hire: in its present form, people will die from it so that others can have a tax cut. Jewishly speaking, that is evil.

Don’t be a Mono!

Image: Black Iguana (Ctenosaura similis) – or “garrobo,” Costa Rica, Prov. Puntarenas, Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio (Photo: some rights reserved.)

My son spent his college summers working in an orphanage in Costa Rica. One year I traveled down there to meet him on his break. He and some friends and I went to Manuel Antonio National Park to hike and see the wildlife.

Monkeys chattered in the trees above us. They were fuzzy and cute and definitely crowd-pleasers. We tourists kept taking their pictures and they ate it up. We saw wonders everywhere: sloths, lizards, insects, all kinds of creatures I had never seen before. The greenery was filled with beautiful animals. We stopped for a bit and a guide showed us a sloth up close through his telescope. I saw the soft fur, the long claws, and its soft snoring.

WHAP! Something landed hard on my head, jamming my sun hat down over my eyes. I felt dazed. The guide grabbed my arm, and my son hollered, “Mom!” The green world circled around me; I focussed on my feet.

There at my feet lay an equally dazed garrobo, the local name for a black spiny-tailed iguana or Ctenosaura similis. She was big, almost 2 feet long. I couldn’t figure out what she (?) was doing there, or why my head hurt so much. She was ugly and beat-up looking. She had lost part of her tail.

It turned out that one way the monkeys, or monos, amuse themselves is by catching the garrobos by the tail and hurling them. They think this is hysterically funny. Some mono had outdone himself with a Daily Double: he smacked the gringa (white lady) in the pink sun hat with the lizard.  The monos celebrated in the tree tops above us, giving the monkey equivalent of high-fives.

The guide and my son wouldn’t let me touch the garrobo, towards whom I felt a great kinship. They were worried that it might bite me, in its confused state, and apparently garrobo bites are serious business. They scavenge for trash, so their mouths are dirty.

I gathered very quickly that no one likes garrobos. Garrobos are not cute. They have no soft fur. They are known to bite children and unwary fools visiting from California. The wild ones are not pretty like the iguanas some people keep for pets. They are grey and black and battered-looking.

We walked up the trail, leaving both the monkeys and the garrobo behind. It bothered me.

Later, I realized what bugged me so much.  The monkeys are cute and furry. The locals know they are not nice creatures, but they entertain tourists who bring money to town. Tourists think they are adorable: they have faces almost like human faces, and they hang from tails and long toes in trees, tiny acrobats.  As the guide said to me, “Everyone likes the monos.”

Except me. The mono banged me on the head. Worse, he used a garrobo to do it. The garrobos are as unpopular as the monos are popular. The difference between them is that garrobos are perceived to be ugly and dirty and the monos are perceived to be cute.

How often in this world do we decide who is “good” and who is “bad” by how people look? How often do we attack someone we don’t like by making fun of their appearance? What happens to the ugly, well-qualified woman who applies for a job? What about the ugly or awkward man – how often do we assume that he is also dangerous?

And what about the handsome people who behave badly – are we not inclined to give them a few more chances? The movie star accused of domestic violence? The good looking young athlete who “doesn’t need to rape anyone” so he couldn’t possibly have done it?

We must not judge people by their looks, even though the ancient wiring in our brains urges us to do so.  As Jews, we are given mitzvot (commandments) about how to treat people precisely because our instincts can deceive us.

  • Love the stranger.
  • Do not cause the blind to stumble.
  • Do not defraud your fellow.
  • Do not tease the deaf.
  • Do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich.

Those are just a few mitzvot from Leviticus 19, with rules for interacting with other people. They don’t differentiate between the people we are inclined to like and those we are inclined to dislike. Nowhere in Torah does it say, “The pretty ones are good” or “the ugly ones are bad.”

In fact, our tradition directs us to judge others on their behavior. It urges us to go past our instincts, past our conditioning, past the easy answers to look at what a person does to determine their worth. In the Book of Ruth, a Moabite woman treats those around her with kindness and care. The fact that she is a member of a race much hated by the Jews of the time is neither here nor there: in fact, she merits becoming an ancestor of King David.

King David was beautiful; men and women fell in love with him. However, the prophet Nathan rebuked him, and God punished him, because he had one of his soldiers put in the front lines to be killed, so that David could enjoy the widow. David was physically beautiful, but he did an evil thing, and the Torah is clear that there are no excuses, even for beautiful princes.

The line I took away from my adventure in the rainforest was, “Don’t be a Mono! Mind the Garrobo!” Don’t be a pretty, privileged person who takes advantage of the weak, ugly person. Never forget that at the end of Creation, God said, “It is very good.” – even the garrobo.

Enough With the Diagnoses!

Image: A braying donkey. Paid photo by Shutterstock. All rights reserved.

“Donald Trump is a sociopath / has narcissistic personality disorder / has ADHD / has Alzheimers / has XYZ.” I see it over and over on social media from people with medical credentials (who should know better) and people with no medical credentials (who need to learn better.)

It does not serve any useful purpose to diagnose another person from afar, and for professionals, it is a serious breach of ethics.

Don’t believe me? Here’s what the American Psychiatric Association has to say on the subject.

Now you may say, oh, that only applies to medical professionals!

Judaism also has something to say about this kind of talk, for all Jews. For this we have to use a couple of texts. First:

When a man has in the skin of his flesh a rising, or a scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes in the skin of his flesh the plague of tzara’at, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest, or to one of his sons the priests. – Leviticus 13:2

The Torah is very cautious about illness. On the rare occasion it speaks of it, it demands that an expert make a diagnosis. We in the 21st century don’t regard kohanim (priests) to be experts on disease, but in Biblical Israel they were trained to recognize tzara’at (the skin disease often mistranslated as “leprosy”) and to recognize many internal problems in animals. In this case, people are actually forbidden to diagnose themselves or others; they are commanded to go to the expert.

You shall not go up and down as a talebearer among your people; neither shall you stand idly upon the blood of your neighbor: I am Adonai. – Leviticus 19:16

This is the famous prohibition against rechilut [gossip]: Even when our words are true, we are not permitted to talk idly about other people. How much the moreso when we talk about a judgment we are not qualified to make? How much the moreso when it is about a judgment that a qualified expert would not make because it would be unethical for them to do so?

Now you may be saying, “But rabbi! It’s obvious that Mr. Trump has XYZ! Here is the evidence in his tweet or his behavior!” That which is obvious is not necessarily true. An example: An elderly woman becomes forgetful. She gets lost on a walk. Her children are distressed and say, “Oh, it is obvious that Mom is getting Alzheimers!” But when mom falls at home and is taken to the hospital, the diagnosis she receives isn’t Alzheimer’s. It turns out that her medications have been the culprit all along. After her meds are adjusted, she returns to her old self. It may have obvious to her children that she had Alzheimer’s, but their amateur diagnosis was false.

A second problem: Most people who talk about Mr. Trump having “XYZ” disagree with his politics and/or his behavior. We have a habit in our society of using words like “crazy” or “insane” when people behave in ways we don’t like. Sometimes it is an attempt at a benign explanation or excuse (“The shooter must have been mentally disturbed!”) The trouble with these words is that they also reinforce the inverse: they suggest that someone who is mentally ill is likely to be a criminal. In fact, most people with mental illnesses are highly unlikely to be dangerous to others. The meme of the “dangerous psycho” perpetuates discrimination against these largely harmless people.

So when I call someone I don’t like, or whose behavior I don’t like, a “mental case,” I am not doing anything about that person’s behavior, I’m just perpetuating a damaging stereotype. That’s not OK.

In the case of a public figure whose words and actions are certainly our business, it’s better to focus on the words or actions themselves.  For instance, it’s perfectly fine – in fact, a civic good! – to point out a lie by citing evidence. It’s constructive to condemn a hurtful or criminal behavior.

Amateur diagnoses of any public official are a waste of time and a waste of valuable public energy. Only a qualified professional who has actually examined a person can make a real diagnosis. A bunch of people on Twitter can go on about how “crazy” someone is or how “he is obviously an example of RPD” but they are just running their keyboards and wasting our time. They are also slandering the vast number of people with illnesses and disorders who mind their own business and hurt no one.

If we are genuinely worried about the incoming administration, we will do better to stick to ethical behavior and actions that will produce results. Some former congressional staffers have put together a very impressive guide to effective action and they have made it available online. That way we can accomplish good and avoid the sin of rechilut.

הִגִּיד לְךָ אָדָם, מַה-טּוֹב; וּמָה-יְהוָה דּוֹרֵשׁ מִמְּךָ, כִּי אִם-עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וְאַהֲבַת חֶסֶד, וְהַצְנֵעַ לֶכֶת, עִם-אֱלֹהֶיךָ

It has been told to you, O human, what is good, and what Adonai requires of you: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8

8th Night: More Things in Heaven and Earth

Image: Sunrise. Photo by Arek Socha / Pixabay.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

My grandmother had a knack for turning up at hospitals whenever a family member went to the emergency room. She couldn’t really explain it; she’d just get a feeling that she needed to go someplace, and she’d go, and as soon as she walked into the ER waiting room, she’d see the person and know why she was there. I don’t know how she did it, but I know of three different occasions on which it happened.

My wife’s parents both died on Dec 25. Bill died of pancreatic cancer. When Eva Mae died, many years later, she was deep into Alzheimer’s and no longer knew anyone who visited her. However, she died on exactly the same day on the calendar that Bill did.

June Carter Cash died on May 15. Her beloved, Johnny Cash, followed her on September 12. In life they could not bear to be separated for long, so no one was surprised when he passed so soon after her.

Skeptics will tell you that my grandmother was a nut. (In truth, I don’t know how many times she went to ER’s on a false hunch.) They will tell you that Eva Mae’s death on Bill’s yahrzeit was a coincidence. And they will tell you that Johnny Cash was very old and sick even before June passed.

But I firmly believe that we human beings are connected to one another in ways that we do not fully understand. I see this message throughout Torah. In fact, it is a central message of Torah: everything we do has consequences for other human beings, much of which comes about precisely because we are so connected to one another. Some of those consequences are easy to see (Joseph annoys his brothers, so they strike back at him in anger in Parashat Vayeshev) and some are more subtle (Joseph’s brothers want him to suffer, and he does, but in Egypt he can rise to power and live to save their lives and uncounted others in the famine in Parashat Miketz. The bond between Aaron and Moses is strong, despite lives that are different in almost every way, and they share a destiny in the foundation of the Jewish nation.

A lot of people are worried about the political changes about to take place in the United States, and the political currents at work in much of the world. I won’t lie: I’m worried too. It seems that many kinds of hate are on the rise, and that our human connections are threatened by selfish and sinister motives.

We learned a lot in the 20th century about what hatred and fear can do to human beings. The French Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, suffered much in the worst of it, and he made it his life’s work to analyze what happened. His philosophy describes the encounter of the Self and the Other, the mystery of the Other, and the way in which the existence of the Other interrupts our individual Self-ishness. The Other disturbs our comfortable Self, demanding response, demanding response. It makes a call to us: a call for love.

I believe that our human nature drives us to connection with other human beings. It has dangers (remember Joseph!) but it carries immense promise. There are those who are driven by fear to objectify other people; they respond to the strangeness of others with brutality. The antidote to that fear is to respond to stranger-ness with love.  That is why our Torah teaches:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong. The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Adonai your God. – Leviticus 19:33-34

I invite you to join me in celebrating this New Year of 2017, this last night of Chanukah, with a commitment to love above all else. Without love we risk descending into the fear and alienation that goes nowhere good. But with love, with a commitment to the mitzvah of loving those who are different from ourselves, everything is possible.

It’s “Just Business,” Right?

Image: A man fastening his tie. Photo by unsplash/pixabay.

In the film The Godfather there’s a very famous line, spoken by Michael Corleone: “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”

Michael Corleone is in the process of becoming a criminal, and the “business” to which he refers is a crime. I wonder sometimes if the people who say “It’s strictly business” about their own dealings realize that they are quoting a criminal.

Usually when a person uses the phrase, they are implying that if something is business, then the usual moral laws don’t apply. Perhaps the action in question is technically legal, or a loophole is found that can make it fall outside the purview of the civil law. And so they say, “It’s just business,” meaning, “Don’t bother me with that morality stuff – that’s for sissies.” Or simply: “It doesn’t matter. It’s just business.”

However, that’s not how Jewish tradition approaches business at all. In the Talmud, behavior in business is seen as so telling of a person’s character that it is the first question God asks at the Seat of Judgment:

When a man is brought before the [heavenly] court he is asked:  “Were you trustworthy in business?” – Shabbat 31a

An enormous block of the Talmud is taken up with business behavior, and it is the topic of a significant chunk of the medieval codes (Mishneh Torah, Shulkhan Aruch) as well. There are mitzvot having to do with weights and measures, with accounts payable and receivable, with payroll, and a myriad other aspects of business life.

Sometimes these mitzvot are remarkably similar to what an MBA would recognize as “Business Ethics” and sometimes not. That’s the reason that the second question at the Seat of Judgment is “Did you set a time for Torah study?” We are not born knowing how to live a life of Torah; we have to study with other Jews and struggle with the texts and the tradition.

The news is full of “just business” that might qualify as Torah transgressions: waste and destruction of natural resources, misleading claims, and dangerous workplaces, to name just a few. I am sure that the people responsible for companies that indulge in such practices tell themselves that they are doing it to stay competitive, that such moral qualms are a luxury they can’t afford.

Torah teaches us that everything we do matters. It matters if we deal fairly with others. It matters what we do with the natural world. It matters when a landlord doesn’t maintain their building. It matters when an employee’s children go to bed hungry. It matters when I pay a few dollars less in taxes and a bridge falls down.

It. All. Matters.

Torah is challenging. Torah is expensive (ask anyone who keeps kosher.) Torah is almost always the harder way of doing things. But at the end of a life of Torah, we can look back and see ways in which the world is a bit better for our having lived in it.

And that is what matters, isn’t it?

News v Gossip: Let There Be Light

Image: Hands with smartphone, the word “NEWS.” Art by geralt at pixabay.com. Public Domain.

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי-אוֹר

And God said, “Let there be light, and there was light. – Gen 1:3

In the Creation story, God uses words to create the world and almost everything in it. Only human beings are different; God uses his hands to make them.

This story in Torah is about many things, but one of the most important to Jews is that words are immensely powerful. Words create worlds.

Today I read about a case of words creating worlds that shocked me to my core. This story by Caitlin Dewey in the Washington Post reports:

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years.

Let that sink in. “Fake-news.” “Fake-news empire.” He has made his living for years selling something he calls fake news.

I’m reading messages on Facebook, and I see a link for a story: “Donald Trump wins popular vote!” If I’m a Trump supporter, I think, “Wow! this is great!” and I click for the story. If I was a Clinton supporter in the election, I think, “Wait, that can’t be right!” and I click for the story. Either way, I read the story and I see all the ads that come with it. Paul Horner makes money. Cha-ching.

This example comes from an article on this phenomenon by Madison Malone Kircher. She includes a link to a list of fake-news sources, and I strongly recommend that you take a look.

OK, so this is very bad. A guy writes lies, labels and markets those lies as News, and markets them to people on the Internet, making his money on ad sales. It’s legal, but it’s also wrong by any moral code I know, and reprehensible according to Jewish tradition.

But it gets worse.

In the interview in the Washington Post, Paul Horner brags that “I think Trump is in the White House because of me.” He outlines exactly how he made up stories and planted evidence to support those stories. He talks scornfully about people who take his stories as truth and never fact-check them, sending them along to others. Note that he wasn’t a Trump supporter – he just thought it was funny to fool Trump supporters. He appears to have soothed his conscience about this by characterizing his writing as satire.

Paul Horner creates worlds with his words. He does not do this alone: he has thousands and thousands of helpers, people who blindly click on headlines, accept articles from websites they know nothing about and send links along to their friends, who trust those words because they came from a friend. They post the links to Twitter and Snapchat. The lies spread like a virus.

And Paul Horner isn’t the only one. Paul Horner is the representative of an industry. To learn what sites not to trust, sites that pride themselves on clickable headlines and viral lies, see this list.

According to Jewish tradition, gossip is a sin. Listening to “news” of unknown reliability and repeating those words, those fall under the heading of rechilut, listening to or spreading gossip.

I confess I’ve clicked on some headlines like that.  I confess that I’ve read the articles, been shocked, once or twice tweeted them.  I (naively) believed that things labeled “news” that seemed possible to me were actual reportage of facts, and I spread those lies by sending the links to others. Chatati – I sinned.

Teshuvah is a process for recovery from a sin. I have realized my sin. I take responsibility for it – I didn’t always check to see if the source was reputable. I’m deeply sorry I did that (and I did know better, because usually I do check to see if a reputable journalist wrote it.) Now for the hard part: a plan to make sure this never happens again.

Tempting as it is to get news from Twitter and Facebook, from now on, I get my news from journalists and nowhere else. I am an online subscriber to the WaPo, the LATimes, the NY Times, and my local news organizations. Sure, I may follow breaking news on Twitter, getting first-hand reports from eyewitnesses, but I will always remember that those witnesses are not journalists. Real journalists are bound by a code of ethics, and when they are caught breaking that code, there are consequences. While there are bad apples in every bin, most journos are trying to find the truth and tell it, and they stake their professional reputations on their words.

News from a professional journalist can be relied on as news. Later facts may change the way we interpret the news, but if one of those journalists is caught in a lie, much less spreading lies for profit, that’s the end of their time at a respectable institution. Also, notice that politicians of all stripes dislike the big newspapers – real journalism annoys ideologues on the left AND the right. If a politician seems chummy with a news organization, something is wrong.

Paul Horner and his ilk are not professional journalists. They don’t even pretend to be journalists. Their excuse is that they are making jokes. In my world, unless their words come with a recognizable label (like The Onion, for instance) it’s a sinful use of words. When we pass along clickbait, we become complicit in the sin.