Justice, Truth, and Peace

Image: Statue of Lady Justice. (Alexander Kirch/Shutterstock, all rights reserved)

Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel used to say: on three things does the world stand: On justice, on truth and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16).

Pirkei Avot 1:18

This quotation from Pirkei Avot stuck in my mind last night, as I watched the impeachment trial of the president on TV.

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel was the president of the Sanhedrin during the First Revolt against Rome, and his life ended in martyrdom: he was beheaded by the Romans, along with the High Priest, Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, just before they destroyed the Temple in 70 CE. For his entire life, Roman Judea had been in turmoil.

Shimon was the son of Rabban Gamliel, another president of the Sanhedrin, and his great-grandfather was Hillel the Elder. The family traced their lineage back to King David. They were as close to royalty as the rabbis ever got.

Here and now in the 21st century, things are looking grim. In the impeachment trial, over half the “jurors” (Senators) have signaled a disinterest in justice or truth by voting again and again for a trial without witnesses or evidence. The Senate Majority Leader has said explicitly that the Republicans in the Senate are coordinating their votes with the White House — that without witnesses or evidence, the matter is already decided. Serious charges are being brushed away as if they are a meaningless nuisance.

The world stands on “justice, truth, and peace.” One might also say that those three qualities are interdependent: it is impossible to have any two of the three without the third. If we want justice, then we need to know the truth of a situation. If we want the truth, then we must hear from witnesses and see the evidence. If we want peace, then we need a process for justice that sorts out what is true and that meets inequities with just solutions.

At this moment, the situation seems dark. The world feels like it is falling apart (nuclear threats from rogue nations, climate change and its terrors, growing inequities of income and resources, to name but a few.) Over half of our people have serious concerns about our leadership, specifically the President and the people who work for him.

What is the righteous person to do at such a time?

Whatever our political ties, we can remind our lawmakers that we are watching this process and taking notes. We can write, fax, or call them and say, “We are watching.” We can demand that they seek the facts. If the facts are in the president’s favor, then he need fear nothing. If the facts are not in his favor, then the Senate will have to take action.

We can, each of us, individually choose justice, truth, and peace:

  • We can conduct our disagreements in just and fair ways, arguing the issues, not the personalities.
  • We can seek truth, not the “post-truth” that privileges emotion and personal belief.
  • We can be relentless in seeking honesty in ourselves.
  • We can ask, “Where is the evidence?”
  • We can refrain from name-calling and mockery.
  • We can seek to connect with the person on the other side of the argument.
  • When it gets to be too much, we can withdraw and recharge rather than burn down the house.
  • We can be humble about the things we do not know, and honor the learning and expertise of others.
  • We can choose hope over despair. I may feel like all is lost, but I must behave as if there is still some hope for improvement.

Talking Amongst Ourselves: Voices of Torah

Image: Voices of Torah, Volumes 1 and 2.

Every quarter, I write one or two divrei Torah (words of Torah, short reflections on a bit of Torah) for the newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR.) Many other rabbis write similar short articles, bringing their learning and insight to the other portions. Rabbi Amy Scheinerman edits each piece, making it much better, and then it appears in a little rabbis-only newsletter. And for years, that was that.

Now the CCAR Press has collected these words of Torah into Voices of Torah, Volume 1 and Volume 2. They are arranged by Torah portion, from Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8) through V’Zot Habrachah (Deuteronomy 33:1-34:12,) with a few additional pieces for holidays (High Holy Days, Purim, Passover, et al.) I’m honored that several of my little pieces were included in Volume 2.

Each short d’var Torah (word limit 250 words! practically Haiku!) is written about a specific Torah portion. Each was written by a rabbi for their colleagues: for rabbis, by rabbis. Some of them are little gems. The editors have polished them up for a lay audience, de-obfuscating the jargon and translating the rabbi-speak into Standard English. It is now a nice resource for someone seeking insight into a particular Torah portion, or someone who needs to give the d’var Torah for a meeting.

The books are for sale directly from CCAR Press or from other online bookshops, including Amazon and Powell’s.

Tu B’Shevat Approaches!

Image: A snowy landscape with bare-branched trees. (Ina Hoekstra / Pixabay)

Tu B’Shevat this year (2020/5780) will begin at sundown on February 9, and end at sundown on February 10.

Because our history goes so far back, many Jewish holidays evolve over time, but this one has changed a lot since its inception, when it was the beginning of a fiscal year for fruit farmers. To learn more about the holiday, check out Tu B’Shevat for Beginners.

It is sometimes called The New Year of the Trees, one of four days that mark a new year for the Jewish people. For more about the other new years, see Four New Years Every Year?!

In this era of worries about climate change, some of us are cultivating a new respect for the trees. Have you ever planted a tree? Saved a tree? Been saved by a tree? Please share your stories in the comments!

Please Don’t Tell Jews How to be Jewish

Image: Annoyed woman with steam coming out of her ears. (Pixabay)

Lately I’ve noticed an uptick of comments and questions from gentiles that come in the general format:

“Why aren’t you Jews conforming to my ideas of how to be Jewish? Doesn’t that make you a bad Jew?”

Usually they are folks who seem to have read the King James Version of the Bible, and nothing else, and they are bothered that the real live Jews around them aren’t acting like Biblical Jews. Alternatively, they’ve picked up some of the antisemitic tropes about Jews, and they want to know why we don’t act in accordance with those tropes. Or — a third, friendlier possibility — they’ve seen Fiddler on the Roof or Yentl and want to generalize from those Hollywood musicals.

Biblical Judaism is not Rabbinic Judaism. Since the Romans destroyed our Temple in the year 70, Judaism has gone through some massive changes. We don’t sacrifice animals (no Temple!) and the Kohanim, or priests, do not make their living running the sacrificial cult any more. Our clergy are rabbis, who are primarily teachers, and cantors, who are experts on worship. If you want to know more than that, I recommend a good book or a Basic Judaism class.

Antisemitism is a bunch of bad information with a hateful agenda. A lot of it is lies, a lot of it is misinformation or twisted information, and it’s hateful. Again, if you want to learn about us, read a good book or take a class. If you want to learn a little about antisemitism, here’s an article.

Fiddler and Yentl are fantasy. So is most of what Hollywood releases on every subject, for that matter! Watching The King and I is entertaining, but it is not a good way to learn the history of Thailand. It gives you a fantasy about a snapshot in time – a particular monarch and his court in the 1860’s, through the lens of 1956 Hollywood. Most movies that include Jewish information – and there are a lot of them! – have some accurate info and some that is sadly inaccurate. If that interests you, check out my website Rabbi At the Movies, where I try to sort the real from the fantasy and the accurate from inaccurate.

Jews in the 21st century are a wildly assorted lot. Some are religious, some not. Some are traditionally observant, some not. Some are educated, some aren’t. Some are Zionists, some aren’t. Some are capitalists, some aren’t. Some are good with money, and some aren’t. Some are smart, some aren’t.

I love a good question, and I love to teach. Bring me genuine curiosity, and I’ll sit and chat all day. But: lecture me on how to be a Jew, when you clearly know nothing about it, and I will get pretty cranky, pretty fast.

Shavua tov, y’all. Have a good week.

Prayer in a Time of Uncertainty

Image: A narcissus flower. (Shutterstock, all rights reserved.)

Oh Holy One, I do not know what is going to happen next.

Too much of life seems uncertain to me, and the future is unknown.

I am surrounded by foolish voices: are they foolish, or am I? I fear the worst, and I cannot even imagine what it is.

Help me to discern those things that I can control. Help me to release the rest.

Guide me to mitzvot that I can do. Show me how I can be helpful to others and increase the good in the world.

May I mirror those who do me a kindness, and may I be untroubled by those who wish to do me harm.

Sim shalom, oh Holy One, make peace among us, now and in the coming days.

Amen.

Meeting the Rabbi – My Story

Image: Rabbi Chester and I at my ordination on 5/18/08. (Photo taken by R. Sanford Akselrad.)

It is a truism among writers that when you particularly love a line or a paragraph it is often the one that most needs to be edited out.

I’m barreling towards a deadline on an article about ritual and conversion to Judaism. The article is supposed to be academic writing, which means that I have to rein in my inclination to tell homey little stories, especially first-person stories.

So here is a bit that had to go. I’m sharing it here to pacify the part of me that was determined to tell it, and partly because I think it might be useful to someone worrying about meeting a rabbi to talk about conversion:

————–

I read anything Jewish I could lay hands upon, absorbed a quantity of information and misinformation, and finally decided I was sure. I called and made an appointment to meet with the rabbi.

So when I first approached Rabbi Steve Chester in 1994, I told him very confidently that I had decided that Judaism was for me. His words to me like a non-sequitur: “There’s a tradition for turning candidates away three times – can we agree that I’ve done that? I don’t want to be unfriendly.”

Then he added, “Maybe you want to be a Jew, maybe not. I’d like to slow down, study with you for a while, and see how it goes.” He explained to me that not every Jew in the world recognizes a Reform conversion, and that it would not hurt his feelings if I decided to meet instead with a Conservative or Orthodox rabbi, just to be sure to let him know. The warning about non-acceptance of converts mostly flew over my head. He gave me a book to read, told me to sign up for an Introduction to Judaism class, told me he expected to see me at services every Shabbat, and we made an appointment to meet again the next month.

He didn’t send me away, but he wasn’t terribly encouraging, either. I could not leave that meeting shouting, “I’m going to be a Jew.” All I knew for sure was that the rabbi had given me assignments to do, and we had an appointment to talk again in a month. What I had, from that moment, was a relationship with a rabbi. And let me tell you, to this day, the relationship with Rabbi Steve Chester is one of the most important in my life.

What is Orthodox Judaism?

Image: Haredi men pray at the Kotel in Jerusalem. (MoneyforCoffee / Pixabay)

A comment on Twitter brought it to my attention that some people were referring to the community that suffered the anti-Semitic terror attack in Monsey, NY on Dec. 28, 2019 as “Habad.” That is incorrect.

You may be asking, “The who? What?”

This seems like a good opportunity to talk a bit about the diversity within the Orthodox Jewish world. I offer the very sketchiest of primers here – entire books could be written on this subject. First I shall point you to Orthodox Judaism and Reyna Weiss’s excellent article, Haredim (Charedim,) or Ultra-Orthodox Jews on MyJewishLearning.com. These treatments do more than skim the surface, which is what I am about to do.

Now, for Rabbi Adar’s 500-word approach to the subject:

  1. There is no such thing as “the Orthodox.” Orthodox Judaism is wildly diverse and includes both Ashkenazim and Sephardim. The word Orthodox means that that the particular group of Jews seeks to be fully and strictly observant of halakhah (Jewish law.) The diversity comes in when they start getting specific about what “fully and strictly observant” means for their particular community, or when minhag (custom) of a community comes into play.
  2. Modern Orthodoxy, which made its appearance in 19th century Germany, seeks to be fully compliant with the details of halakhah (Jewish law) while engaging positively with the modern secular world. Within Modern Orthodoxy you will still find a wide spectrum of practice.
  3. There are many other traditions of Judaism that strive for strict observance. They differ about all sorts of things: the importance and legitimacy of mysticism, ethnic styles, the State of Israel, Zionism, models of leadership, attitudes towards contact with Jews outside their particular group, or with liberal Jews, etc. Most of them call themselves “Orthodox.”
  4. A sub-group within Orthodoxy that is itself quite diverse are the Haredi or ultra-Orthodox. (Some feel that “ultra-Orthodox” is a slur, and so the term Haredi or Charedi or Hasidim is preferred.) In general, Haredim wear distinctive and extremely modest clothing and separate their communities from outsiders.
  5. Hasidim are a sub-group within the Haredi world, but their roots go back to the 18th century. It arose as a spiritual revival movement and is strongly identified with its founder, Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov [Master of the Good Name.] (There are also liberal Jews with deep interest in hasidoot, the mystical teachings of Hasidic rabbis.)
  6. Chabad is a well-known Hasidic movement. It was founded in 1775 by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, also known as the Alter Rebbe. The name “Chabad” is an acronym of three emanations of God: Chochmah, Binah, Da’at. They are also sometimes referred to as Lubavitch because from 1813 until 1915 their leadership resided in the town of Lyubavichi in Russia. For more about Chabad, I recommend this article from the Jewish Virtual Library.
  7. There are many, many smaller groups that identify as Orthodox, as Haredi, or as Hasidic. The congregation in Monsey, NY are members of such a group, and honestly I don’t know much about them. As I am able to learn more, I will add the information to this article.

Most important to me is to underline before I finish this that while I do not see Orthodox expressions of Judaism as “more authentic” than other expressions of Judaism, I respect Orthodox Jews as cousins with whom I have more in common than not. We differ on many things but I stand with them against the tide of the dark forces of anti-Semitism that have been particularly cruel to them in the past month.

We are all Jews.

It’s Rosh Chodesh Tevet!

Image: Candles on the menorah are nearly out. (Ri Butov / Pixabay)

Welcome to Tevet!

Tevet is the month that begins in the middle of a holiday. We are celebrating Chanukah, and when we light the sixth candle, the month of Tevet arrives to join us.

Despite its fancy beginning, Tevet is a quiet little month for Jews. The biggest thing to happen in it is not a Jewish day at all: the Gregorian New Year (January 1) usually falls in the month of Tevet.

The only other official Jewish day of observance in this month is Asara b’Tevet [10th of Tevet] on which some Jews fast to remember the day in 588 BCE when the army of Nebuchadnezzar, emperor of Babylon, laid seige to Jerusalem. In the month of Av, a year and a half later, they would enter the city and destroy Solomon’s Temple, which we refer to as the First Temple.

Rosh Chodesh is the first of every Jewish month. It means “head of the month” and it lines up (more or less) with the New Moon.

One of the quirks of the Jewish calendar as we know it today is that it is in some ways a hand-me-down from ancient Babylon. Before the destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians and the subsequent exile, we know that Jews followed a lunar calendar that began its months on the new moon and that had adjustments to keep the agricultural holidays in their proper seasons. We have a few month names from that calendar in the Torah, but most of the months seem to have been like modern Hebrew days. They went by number, “In the First Month” etc.

But the names of the months we use today came back from Babylon with our ancestors. Tevet in Babylon was Tebetu or something similar. If you are curious about the Babylonian calendar there are a few Internet sites that explore it, including this one.

Enjoy the last remaining nights of Chanukah and don’t forget to add the greeting, Chodesh Tov!  Happy New Month!

Feeling the need for a good Jewish calendar? You’ve got one in your smartphone or computer!

Divrei Torah on Parashat Miketz

I associate memories with certain Torah portions. I remember Shelach Lecha as the week I  became a Jew, and the week I left home for rabbinical school. I remember Yitro as the first time I first chanted Torah for the congregation. And I remember Miketz because it was the portion I was assigned for my first d’var Torah in rabbinical school.

On the one hand, the stories in Miketz have been favorites of mine ever since I was little: Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams! Joseph becomes the Prime Minister of Egypt! Joseph faces his brothers again! And on the other hand I was going to speak before the whole school, and I wanted to say something profound about the Joseph story. Rabbi Dr. Michael Marmur was assigned to me as a mentor for the first sermon, and I was as intimidated by his reputation as Joseph’s brothers must have been in Pharaoh’s court.

I didn’t say anything profound that week. It was a fine learning experience: Rabbi Marmur taught me how to dig into the text for something coherent to say, and as far as I recall, I performed adequately. I remember, with blushes now, my overblown ambitions for that sermon.

However, I have some wonderful divrei Torah for you from people with more practice at it than I had back in 2002!

Rabbi Ellen M. Umansky — Forgiveness and Reconciliation with the Past

Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild — Mikketz: how knowledge and understanding still requires wisdom if we are to avert environmental disaster

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat — Miketz: Letting Yourself Dream

Rabbi John Rosove — Jewish Survival is not a Given

Rabbi Aaron D. Panken z”l — Joseph and Potiphar: The Named, The Neutered, and the Neutralized

A Jew on Christmas Day

Image: My neighbor’s house is amazing. (Photo by Adar.)

My neighbor’s house is amazing, like a branch office of Disneyland.

My house has a menorah in the window. One of our poodles is mesmerized by the menorah; we don’t know why.

Many Jews are gathered for a family party, because this is the day that most of us have time off.

Some Jews are gathered with Christian relatives.

Some Jews are going to the movies, and out for Asian food.

Some Jews are feeling awkward about all the “Merry Christmas” greetings, and some are not.

Some Jews have really been enjoying all the wild lights in their neighborhood (that’s me.)

Some Jews are glad they don’t have to clean up the mess afterwards (again, me!)

Some Jews are working, having traded the day with Christian co-workers; they’ll be off for synagogue next Rosh HaShanah.

Some Jews hope the rabbi doesn’t stop by and see their Christmas tree.

Some Jews are feeling really conflicted about all of it.

Some Jews and many others are working today: cops, firefighters, EMTs, doctors, nurses, people at the power company, people working transit, clerks at the 7-11.  (Thank you!)

Some Jews are feeling left out.

Some Jews are ladling food at soup kitchens.

Most Jews and their neighbors wish for Peace on Earth, today and every day.

Because there is too much hunger, too much poverty, too much war, too much disease, too much pain, too much sorrow, too much tsuris in the world.

May the new secular year be a year in which we can find a way to work together against war, poverty, hunger, and pain.

May be new secular year be a year in which we have the courage to see new ways of listening and talking, walking and running.

May we have courage. May we have heart. May we have strength.

May we remember this feeling of being the Other the next time we are tempted to Other another.

Amen.

(Adapted from a previous post, in a different year. Time flies, and things change.)