In last month’s column I alluded to the Pittsburgh Principles of 1999 in which Reform Rabbis set what was intended to be the direction for the Reform Movement at the turn of the century. These Principles defined what it is to be a Reform Jew in terms of Dialogue with God, Dialogue with Torah, and Dialogue with the Jewish Community. I mentioned then that William Isaacs, in his important book Dialogue, defines dialogue as ““a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before.” Isaacs goes on to say that “The intention of dialogue is to reach new understanding and, in doing so, to form a totally new basis from which to think and act.”
In that context, what does it mean to say that a fundamental of Reform Judaism is dialogue with God? What is the center of the conversation, and what are the differences we will channel toward a new understanding, a new basis from which to think and act?
The other book I mentioned, which the Thursday night study group is using as a base text, A Vision of Holiness by Rabbi Richard Levy, makes short work of the naïve notion that a conversation or dialogue with God would take the form of a conversation between people, with each party speaking and listening. Rather, he places the center of the conversation on the human side, in a person’s communing with the Infinite, seeing God in nature, in ourselves, and in other people, from our side speaking with God, and trusting in listening from God’s side and even in God’s answering, though not in words or in a voice as we understand it (Richard Alpert, aka Ram Dass said “if you speak to God, you’re praying; if God speaks to you, you’re crazy).
So if the center of the dialogue is within each of us, what are the differences that give the dialogue its energy? Well, first of all, God is God and we are not. God is infinite and we are finite. At the same time, as Jews, we live inside a covenant with God that we would be chosen to bring God’s word to the world and in turn we would be “a realm of priests and a holy people.” Levy notes that the Priests and Levites in the days of the temple wore a band on their forehead that read “Holy to God,” so that the were, in a sense, never off duty, and suggests that if we saw each ,people and to the world very differently. If we saw everything – people, sunsets, trees, empty bottles, oil, and even our enemies as “Holy to God” we would, indeed, have “a new understanding, a new basis from which to think and act.”
Most of us live here at Lake Tahoe out of some sense that the mountains, the lake, the weather, and the opportunities to live closer to nature are more to our liking than we would find most other places, particularly in cities. Levy suggests that the Dialogue with God may consist in appreciating God in each of these natural phenomena and recommends the Jewish practice of “a bracha for every occasion” as a kind of what the Buddhists would call a “mindfulness practice” to remind ourselves that yes, nature is awesome, but nature is a manifestation of God and we are no less a manifestation of God, created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image. So when we say Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, oseh ma’aseh v’reishit (Praised are you God, Ruler of the Universe, who continues the work of creation) we are creating a conversation with ourselves as the center, highlighting the difference between the Creator and the created, and creating a new basis from which we can interact with nature.
Similarly when at the end of Shabbat we wish for a good week for ourselves and others, and on the succeeding Shabbat we notice that it was a good week, we have created a conversation in the form of a request and God has answered. And if we have the thought that it wasn’t such a good week, but then we notice that at the week’s end we are here, we are healthy, and we have another opportunity to have a good week, we can take the opportunity to understand that, in God’s way, our prayer has been answered.
So the Dialogue with God the Rabbis created in the Pittsburgh Principles is, I believe, accessible to all of us – even those whose conception of God is not of an all-powerful old greybeard on a throne surrounded by angels singing hymns of praise and those who are not sure, and even those who do not believe in God – because even making the effort not to believe creates a dialogue.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Reform Judaism
Joining NTHC ten years ago was, as I’ve written before, my first serious foray into Reform Judaism. Over the years, and particularly since Rabbi Postrel came to us, I’ve gotten more and more interested in what RJ is, after a lifetime of defining it by what it is not. Recently I’ve discovered that the RJ movement itself began, in a sense, by defining itself by what it is not.
In 1885, a group of fifteen Rabbis met in Pittsburgh to deal with what they saw as a growing threat from the then-new Conservative. The document they produced, called the Pittsburgh Platform, declared that only the Torah’s moral laws were binding on Reform Jews, and that laws regarding diet and dress, for example, were not. There were several subsequent convocations to continue defining RJ, but no substantial change until 1999 when, again in Pittsburgh, North American Reform Rabbis convened to articulate anew the direction of the Reform Movement. At that meeting, they created a new document, the Pittsburgh Principles, that defines RJ in the 21st Century. In that meeting the Rabbis took back much of the tradition discarded in 1999, making the use of Hebrew and a commitment to mitzvot acceptable in RJ.
More than that, though, they placed God, Torah, and the Jewish Community (Klal Yisrael) including the State of Israel, at the foundation of RJ, with individual autonomy and informed choice as its guiding principles. In this column and in several to come over the next few months, I’d like to explore these four areas – first the guiding philosophy of RJ and then the Reform Jew’s tripartite dialogue, with God, with Torah, and with the Jewish People. I will be drawing on a number of sources for this conversation, but my primary one is an excellent book on the subject called A Vision of Holiness by Rabbi Richard N. Levy of Hebrew Union College, published by URJ Press in 2005.
What makes RJ unusual among Western religions is the centrality of individual autonomy and informed choice, and these are also, in my opinion, what makes it misunderstood. In the Western view, indeed in the view of most of the non-Buddhist world, religion is prescriptive – it tells its adherents what to believe and how to live. RJ, on the other hand, says the choices are ours to make and asks only that they be informed choices.
This single element of informed choice gives the lie to the view that RJ is “do it yourself” Judaism, or that RJ makes no demand on its followers. Yes, we are free to make choices, but to call ourselves Reform Jews, these choices need to be based on learning and thinking. One of the most fundamental commandments in the Torah is “na-ase v’nishma” – to act and to listen. RJ reverses the order of these: first we must listen – to God, to Torah, and to the Jewish Community – and then act.
The very act of studying Torah to inform ourselves before we make our choices makes us Jews rather than simply “spiritual” or “non-affiliated” people. The NTHC Board begin each of our meetings with a prayer by the Rabbi to dedicate our work to the study of Torah and a D’var Torah by one of the Trustees, so that the context for all of our deliberations as a Board is Torah.
I know people who consider themselves “cultural Jews” or “culinary Jews,” but I really don’t get it. To be a Jew is to be in a dialogue – in fact, the modern conception of dialogue draws heavily on the work of Jews, particularly Martin Buber and the physicist David Bohm. In a recent book, William Isaacs draws on both Buber and Bohm when he defines dialogue as “a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before.” I believe it is in this sense of the term that the Pittsburgh Principles are framed as dialogues between the Reform Jew and God, Torah, and the Jewish People.
The notion of RJ as a dialogue also resolves, I think, the superficial contradiction between individual autonomy and informed choice. Yes, we have as individuals complete autonomy. Any one of us at any time can invent our own brand of Judaism or declare ourselves not Jews at all. But if to be a Jew is to be in dialogue with God, with the Torah, and with Klal Yisrael, then it behooves us to bring this autonomy to the dialogue, and to have the dialogue inform our choices rather than simply to make up what Judaism is based on our own prejudices or how it was where we were brought up, or how it is convenient for us to have it be. In the coming months I will address these three dialogues in detail.
In 1885, a group of fifteen Rabbis met in Pittsburgh to deal with what they saw as a growing threat from the then-new Conservative. The document they produced, called the Pittsburgh Platform, declared that only the Torah’s moral laws were binding on Reform Jews, and that laws regarding diet and dress, for example, were not. There were several subsequent convocations to continue defining RJ, but no substantial change until 1999 when, again in Pittsburgh, North American Reform Rabbis convened to articulate anew the direction of the Reform Movement. At that meeting, they created a new document, the Pittsburgh Principles, that defines RJ in the 21st Century. In that meeting the Rabbis took back much of the tradition discarded in 1999, making the use of Hebrew and a commitment to mitzvot acceptable in RJ.
More than that, though, they placed God, Torah, and the Jewish Community (Klal Yisrael) including the State of Israel, at the foundation of RJ, with individual autonomy and informed choice as its guiding principles. In this column and in several to come over the next few months, I’d like to explore these four areas – first the guiding philosophy of RJ and then the Reform Jew’s tripartite dialogue, with God, with Torah, and with the Jewish People. I will be drawing on a number of sources for this conversation, but my primary one is an excellent book on the subject called A Vision of Holiness by Rabbi Richard N. Levy of Hebrew Union College, published by URJ Press in 2005.
What makes RJ unusual among Western religions is the centrality of individual autonomy and informed choice, and these are also, in my opinion, what makes it misunderstood. In the Western view, indeed in the view of most of the non-Buddhist world, religion is prescriptive – it tells its adherents what to believe and how to live. RJ, on the other hand, says the choices are ours to make and asks only that they be informed choices.
This single element of informed choice gives the lie to the view that RJ is “do it yourself” Judaism, or that RJ makes no demand on its followers. Yes, we are free to make choices, but to call ourselves Reform Jews, these choices need to be based on learning and thinking. One of the most fundamental commandments in the Torah is “na-ase v’nishma” – to act and to listen. RJ reverses the order of these: first we must listen – to God, to Torah, and to the Jewish Community – and then act.
The very act of studying Torah to inform ourselves before we make our choices makes us Jews rather than simply “spiritual” or “non-affiliated” people. The NTHC Board begin each of our meetings with a prayer by the Rabbi to dedicate our work to the study of Torah and a D’var Torah by one of the Trustees, so that the context for all of our deliberations as a Board is Torah.
I know people who consider themselves “cultural Jews” or “culinary Jews,” but I really don’t get it. To be a Jew is to be in a dialogue – in fact, the modern conception of dialogue draws heavily on the work of Jews, particularly Martin Buber and the physicist David Bohm. In a recent book, William Isaacs draws on both Buber and Bohm when he defines dialogue as “a conversation with a center, not sides. It is a way of taking the energy of our differences and channeling it toward something that has never been created before.” I believe it is in this sense of the term that the Pittsburgh Principles are framed as dialogues between the Reform Jew and God, Torah, and the Jewish People.
The notion of RJ as a dialogue also resolves, I think, the superficial contradiction between individual autonomy and informed choice. Yes, we have as individuals complete autonomy. Any one of us at any time can invent our own brand of Judaism or declare ourselves not Jews at all. But if to be a Jew is to be in dialogue with God, with the Torah, and with Klal Yisrael, then it behooves us to bring this autonomy to the dialogue, and to have the dialogue inform our choices rather than simply to make up what Judaism is based on our own prejudices or how it was where we were brought up, or how it is convenient for us to have it be. In the coming months I will address these three dialogues in detail.
The War on “Holidays”
Not too long ago we used to hear concern among Jewish families about the “December dilemma,” wherein Jewish children, surrounded in school, in stores, and on TV with the iconography of Christmas, would suffer a kind of religious identity crisis and feel left out of the mainstream culture’s most important holiday.
Today we are seeing a different December dilemma. Most people in the United States have become aware of and sensitive to the fact that (a) this is probably the most religiously diverse country in the world and (b) the Framers of the Constitution intended expressly for the government to be neutral on the question of religious in order to ensure freedom of and (if desired) from religion for everyone in the United States. As a result of this increased awareness and sensitivity, the Christian Religious Right (hereafter “Christianists” – think “Islamists”) is crying “foul” and attempting to retake what they see as their right to declare the US a “Christian Country.” Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson have decried what they call the “war on Christmas” and urged boycotts of stores such as Macy’s and Target, who use the word “holidays” in their ads and do not mention Christmas. (Wal-Mart, also a target, has already backed off and changed its ads to Christmas), and even the Bush White House has come under fire for its “holiday” cards and tree (The tree is now a Christmas tree).
Actually, this supposed war on Christmas is nothing new – Henry Ford, writing in 1929, blamed it explicitly on the Jews, and the John Birch Society in the ‘50’s updated it to the Communists (and we all know who they are, wink wink). Today’s Christian Right do not blame the Jews explicitly but rather what they consider the encroaching forces of secularism, conveniently ignoring that the country has been secular since 1789. Not aggressively secular like France, where no hint of religion is allowed in public, but inclusively secular – open to all religions and to the non-religious and anti-religious, while founded on the assumption that there is a God and that what God has granted to one God has granted to all.
The Christianists insist that this is a Christian Country, founded by Christians for Christians, and the rest of us are here out of their generosity and Christian love. The Supreme Court under both Conservative and Liberal leadership has repeatedly rejected the Christian country notion, but they are not deterred by this.
It seems to me that as Jews and as human beings we must resist this latest attempt to hijack the national culture by one group who claim to represent a majority view. The term “holidays” is inclusive of Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and unless it comes early as it did this year, Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. Christmas does not even include Orthodox Christians who celebrate Jesus’ birth on January 7th or sects such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not celebrate it as a holiday at all.
I know there are those, including some in this Congregation, who consider the Christianists our friends because they are pro-Israel, albeit for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the Jews. I don’t think that’s relevant here and mention it only to forestall their cries of anguish as I risk insulting our “allies.”
By the time you read this, the holidays will be over, but the Christianist effort will not end there. This is a case where those supposed allies, led by the likes of O’Reilly, Gibson and Falwell are attempting to bend a quasi-religious argument to their own political ends. Edmund Burke said that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. We cannot afford to do nothing in this case or we will, indeed, find ourselves living in a “Christian Country.”
Today we are seeing a different December dilemma. Most people in the United States have become aware of and sensitive to the fact that (a) this is probably the most religiously diverse country in the world and (b) the Framers of the Constitution intended expressly for the government to be neutral on the question of religious in order to ensure freedom of and (if desired) from religion for everyone in the United States. As a result of this increased awareness and sensitivity, the Christian Religious Right (hereafter “Christianists” – think “Islamists”) is crying “foul” and attempting to retake what they see as their right to declare the US a “Christian Country.” Fox News personalities Bill O’Reilly and John Gibson have decried what they call the “war on Christmas” and urged boycotts of stores such as Macy’s and Target, who use the word “holidays” in their ads and do not mention Christmas. (Wal-Mart, also a target, has already backed off and changed its ads to Christmas), and even the Bush White House has come under fire for its “holiday” cards and tree (The tree is now a Christmas tree).
Actually, this supposed war on Christmas is nothing new – Henry Ford, writing in 1929, blamed it explicitly on the Jews, and the John Birch Society in the ‘50’s updated it to the Communists (and we all know who they are, wink wink). Today’s Christian Right do not blame the Jews explicitly but rather what they consider the encroaching forces of secularism, conveniently ignoring that the country has been secular since 1789. Not aggressively secular like France, where no hint of religion is allowed in public, but inclusively secular – open to all religions and to the non-religious and anti-religious, while founded on the assumption that there is a God and that what God has granted to one God has granted to all.
The Christianists insist that this is a Christian Country, founded by Christians for Christians, and the rest of us are here out of their generosity and Christian love. The Supreme Court under both Conservative and Liberal leadership has repeatedly rejected the Christian country notion, but they are not deterred by this.
It seems to me that as Jews and as human beings we must resist this latest attempt to hijack the national culture by one group who claim to represent a majority view. The term “holidays” is inclusive of Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and unless it comes early as it did this year, Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. Christmas does not even include Orthodox Christians who celebrate Jesus’ birth on January 7th or sects such as Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who do not celebrate it as a holiday at all.
I know there are those, including some in this Congregation, who consider the Christianists our friends because they are pro-Israel, albeit for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of the Jews. I don’t think that’s relevant here and mention it only to forestall their cries of anguish as I risk insulting our “allies.”
By the time you read this, the holidays will be over, but the Christianist effort will not end there. This is a case where those supposed allies, led by the likes of O’Reilly, Gibson and Falwell are attempting to bend a quasi-religious argument to their own political ends. Edmund Burke said that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. We cannot afford to do nothing in this case or we will, indeed, find ourselves living in a “Christian Country.”
Lech Lecha 05
The Torah Portion Lech Lecha (Genesis XII – XVII) begins with God telling Abram “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great and you will be a blessing. And I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
Later in the portion come the story of Hagar and the birth of Ishmael and of the birth of Isaac – Ishmael is held to be the founder of the Arab peoples, and Isaac of the Jewish, and therefore the Christian peoples, so all three of the Western religions look to Abraham as their ancestor – he is a blessing to the world because he belongs to the world.
From this beginning, the history of animosity and persecution between the three Abrahamic faiths seems a distortion of God’s intent. Diversity, including religious diversity, must somehow factor into God’s plans for humanity, yet we continue to operate as if, somehow, religious differences are rooted in error, and only those who hold to the “true faith” are following God’s path.
Often our position as Jews in this religious conflict reminds me of the three monks who took a vow of silence. As night fell, one turned to a servant and told him to light a lamp. The second monk said “we are not supposed to talk,” and the third monk said “I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken.”
We Jews remind me of the third monk – when we speak of religious differences and persecution, we focus on what has been done to us, and say “we’re the only ones who don’t persecute.” In fact, though, throughout history we haven’t really needed the others to persecute us – we’ve done a good job on our own to our own. In the early years of the Common Era Pharisees argued and fought with Saducees, Hellenists were opposed by traditionalists, and divergent sects such as the followers of Jesus were hounded as heretics. Later, in the 18th Century Jewish enlightenment, the Maskilim, or “enlightened” Jews fought with Talmudists, and Mitnagim fought with Chasidim. Today in Israel the ruling Orthodox are still fighting a rear-guard action against all other approaches to Judaism, and of course we have the century-old antagonism between Jew and Arab that has cost both sides so much.
In modern times our internal antagonism has abated somewhat. Ashkenazim and Sephardim live side by side, and have adopted some of each others’ customs, food, etc. Western European Ashkenazim such as German and Austrian Jews have mostly dropped their antipathy toward those from Eastern Europe, and, outside Israel, at least, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews live peacefully together, and show signs of learning from each other.
Maybe it’s time for a genuine effort at interfaith outreach and understanding, and I can’t think of a better place for that to start than here In addition to the religious diversity in our own temple, we live in an area that is at least as religiously diverse as most outside the big cities. Just in this area I know, and I suspect you do as well, not only Jews but Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, agnostics, deists, and atheists, and we all seem to be living together pretty well.
This Fall we have had and will have some outstanding opportunities for interfaith encounters. On Wednesday, November 16, Rabbi Postrel and Father Jim Beebe of St. Patrick’s in Incline created an interfaith Thanksgiving service, held in our Temple. On Saturday, December 10, we will be hosting a celebration of the formal installation of Rabbi Postrel as our Rabbi, and we have invited not only Rabbis and Cantors from around the area and other parts of the country, but also local clergy as well. The next day Father Beebe will be installed as the new Rector of St. Patrick’s as well. Then at the end of December, Chanukah begins as Christmas Day ends – what an opportunity to share both holidays with our non-Jewish friends.
In business and in politics there is a growing recognition of the power of dialogue as a solution to problems that have seemed unsolvable. One author describes dialogue as “a conversation with a center rather than sides.” Maybe it’s time for the world’s religions to undertake a serious dialogue, one designed to celebrate and learn from diversity rather than to attempt to eradicate it by taking sides and trying to prove whose view of God is the “right” one, and maybe a place that dialogue can start is here.
We call the patriarch “Avraham avinu” – Abraham our father – but the Torah clearly says that Abraham is not exclusively our father any more than I am exclusively the father of one of my children and not of the others – the concept is ridiculous.
“I will make you a great nation…and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Later in the parshah, God renames Avram Av raham – the father of a multitude of nations. “My covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.” I think we forget that part about all the families of the earth shall be blessed. God clearly does not intend to institute one single way of worship – Abraham is the founder of monotheism, and of all the Western religions. If the Jewish people are “chosen,” it is because we are singled out for the fulfillment of this mission. Perhaps it is not an accident that, of the three great faiths, we are the only one that has been persecuted, but not, for the most part been persecutors of anyone but ourselves - -maybe that has positioned us to be the brokers of peace and the agents of the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? And if not here, then where?
Let’s start here, let’s start now.
Later in the portion come the story of Hagar and the birth of Ishmael and of the birth of Isaac – Ishmael is held to be the founder of the Arab peoples, and Isaac of the Jewish, and therefore the Christian peoples, so all three of the Western religions look to Abraham as their ancestor – he is a blessing to the world because he belongs to the world.
From this beginning, the history of animosity and persecution between the three Abrahamic faiths seems a distortion of God’s intent. Diversity, including religious diversity, must somehow factor into God’s plans for humanity, yet we continue to operate as if, somehow, religious differences are rooted in error, and only those who hold to the “true faith” are following God’s path.
Often our position as Jews in this religious conflict reminds me of the three monks who took a vow of silence. As night fell, one turned to a servant and told him to light a lamp. The second monk said “we are not supposed to talk,” and the third monk said “I’m the only one who hasn’t spoken.”
We Jews remind me of the third monk – when we speak of religious differences and persecution, we focus on what has been done to us, and say “we’re the only ones who don’t persecute.” In fact, though, throughout history we haven’t really needed the others to persecute us – we’ve done a good job on our own to our own. In the early years of the Common Era Pharisees argued and fought with Saducees, Hellenists were opposed by traditionalists, and divergent sects such as the followers of Jesus were hounded as heretics. Later, in the 18th Century Jewish enlightenment, the Maskilim, or “enlightened” Jews fought with Talmudists, and Mitnagim fought with Chasidim. Today in Israel the ruling Orthodox are still fighting a rear-guard action against all other approaches to Judaism, and of course we have the century-old antagonism between Jew and Arab that has cost both sides so much.
In modern times our internal antagonism has abated somewhat. Ashkenazim and Sephardim live side by side, and have adopted some of each others’ customs, food, etc. Western European Ashkenazim such as German and Austrian Jews have mostly dropped their antipathy toward those from Eastern Europe, and, outside Israel, at least, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews live peacefully together, and show signs of learning from each other.
Maybe it’s time for a genuine effort at interfaith outreach and understanding, and I can’t think of a better place for that to start than here In addition to the religious diversity in our own temple, we live in an area that is at least as religiously diverse as most outside the big cities. Just in this area I know, and I suspect you do as well, not only Jews but Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, agnostics, deists, and atheists, and we all seem to be living together pretty well.
This Fall we have had and will have some outstanding opportunities for interfaith encounters. On Wednesday, November 16, Rabbi Postrel and Father Jim Beebe of St. Patrick’s in Incline created an interfaith Thanksgiving service, held in our Temple. On Saturday, December 10, we will be hosting a celebration of the formal installation of Rabbi Postrel as our Rabbi, and we have invited not only Rabbis and Cantors from around the area and other parts of the country, but also local clergy as well. The next day Father Beebe will be installed as the new Rector of St. Patrick’s as well. Then at the end of December, Chanukah begins as Christmas Day ends – what an opportunity to share both holidays with our non-Jewish friends.
In business and in politics there is a growing recognition of the power of dialogue as a solution to problems that have seemed unsolvable. One author describes dialogue as “a conversation with a center rather than sides.” Maybe it’s time for the world’s religions to undertake a serious dialogue, one designed to celebrate and learn from diversity rather than to attempt to eradicate it by taking sides and trying to prove whose view of God is the “right” one, and maybe a place that dialogue can start is here.
We call the patriarch “Avraham avinu” – Abraham our father – but the Torah clearly says that Abraham is not exclusively our father any more than I am exclusively the father of one of my children and not of the others – the concept is ridiculous.
“I will make you a great nation…and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Later in the parshah, God renames Avram Av raham – the father of a multitude of nations. “My covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.” I think we forget that part about all the families of the earth shall be blessed. God clearly does not intend to institute one single way of worship – Abraham is the founder of monotheism, and of all the Western religions. If the Jewish people are “chosen,” it is because we are singled out for the fulfillment of this mission. Perhaps it is not an accident that, of the three great faiths, we are the only one that has been persecuted, but not, for the most part been persecutors of anyone but ourselves - -maybe that has positioned us to be the brokers of peace and the agents of the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? And if not here, then where?
Let’s start here, let’s start now.
Reform Judaism
Leading services weekly over a couple of months has been a really interesting experience for me. I’ve never really studied the Torah and commentaries on the Torah in depth, and so for each service I have had to do some studying to get behind the text to what it may have to teach us for life today, particularly for those of us who are not “commandment Jews.”
A Rabbi who visited recently, Oren Postrel, made the distinction in some teaching he did between “Commandment Judaism” and “Reform Judaism.” He made the point, and I think it’s a good one, that the fundamental difference between the two starts with each branch’s view of the Torah. Commandment Judaism holds that the Torah was given as a whole to Moses and the Jewish people at Sinai, and that every word was written by God. Reform Jews believe that the Torah was written over time, inspired by God and written by a variety of people.
Rabbi Postrel made the point that, if you believe as Commandment Jews believe, then it follows that you must obey every commandment in the Torah, if not literally, then as interpreted by the Rabbis, since Commandment Jews also hold that the Talmud is God’s word. Reform Jews’ position is not nearly so clear. Some hold that Reform is “pick and choose” Judaism – follow those injunctions and prohibitions that you like, don’t follow those you don’t. I, for one, reject this view – it’s just too facile for me.
I came to Reform Judaism late in life. I was raised Conservative, in a congregation that was just making the transition from Orthodox to Conservative; my parents were raised Orthodox. In my life I have engaged with both Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, with mixed results in terms of my own personal search for spiritual meaning. I have also engaged seriously in the study of Buddhism, less seriously studied Hinduism and could not help but learn about Christianity as one must in this country, though the nuances that separate the various branches of Christianity continue to elude me.
As I’ve engaged with Reform Judaism over the past ten years or so, I’ve become more and more interested in it because it seems to me to demand more engagement and thought, not to say faith, than do the more doctrinaire forms. In my personal development I have come to value inclusiveness very highly in all areas of life – the more of life, the more people and points of view I exclude, the less rich is my intellectual life – and I find RJ, and this congregation in particular to be explicitly inclusive, to the extent that even non-Jews are welcome and part of the community. This fits for me.
Mostly, though, RJ has caused me to really think about God and Torah, outside the bounds of doctrine. This has taken me, particularly lately, to thinking about what might be the fundamental message of the Torah – that which is behind the arcane rules about sacrifices and the stories of people being struck dead, that which is the real essence of being a Jew and maybe of being a human being. In preparing various divrei Torah over the past weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that underneath it all the Torah is teaching us two things: first, that God is One. Not that there is one God - that may have been news in Abraham’s time but not now – but that God is a whole – all of it, everything – that there is nothing outside God and that good and evil are under our control and consist of our choices to turn toward or away from God.
Second to the oneness of God is the admonition to “be holy, for God is holy.” Said another way, to live in imitation of God. For this, the Torah is an instruction manual, but one that is meant to be read metaphorically not literally. The dietary laws, for example, tell us which qualities God means for us to incorporate (e.g., cleanliness, humility, living together in peace) and which God wants us to reject (e.g., predation, isolation, ferocity). The repeated injunctions to remember our slavery in Egypt and the Exodus can be understood to be reminders to treat others with dignity and compassion and to remember that, though we were chosen by God, we have been at the bottom of the social ladder many times in our existence.
So I’ve come to really value and respect Reform Judaism – with its commitments to thinking for oneself, to inclusion, to equality of all genders and orientations, to tikkun olam, and most of all to being able to be Jews without divorcing ourselves from the modern world.
A Rabbi who visited recently, Oren Postrel, made the distinction in some teaching he did between “Commandment Judaism” and “Reform Judaism.” He made the point, and I think it’s a good one, that the fundamental difference between the two starts with each branch’s view of the Torah. Commandment Judaism holds that the Torah was given as a whole to Moses and the Jewish people at Sinai, and that every word was written by God. Reform Jews believe that the Torah was written over time, inspired by God and written by a variety of people.
Rabbi Postrel made the point that, if you believe as Commandment Jews believe, then it follows that you must obey every commandment in the Torah, if not literally, then as interpreted by the Rabbis, since Commandment Jews also hold that the Talmud is God’s word. Reform Jews’ position is not nearly so clear. Some hold that Reform is “pick and choose” Judaism – follow those injunctions and prohibitions that you like, don’t follow those you don’t. I, for one, reject this view – it’s just too facile for me.
I came to Reform Judaism late in life. I was raised Conservative, in a congregation that was just making the transition from Orthodox to Conservative; my parents were raised Orthodox. In my life I have engaged with both Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, with mixed results in terms of my own personal search for spiritual meaning. I have also engaged seriously in the study of Buddhism, less seriously studied Hinduism and could not help but learn about Christianity as one must in this country, though the nuances that separate the various branches of Christianity continue to elude me.
As I’ve engaged with Reform Judaism over the past ten years or so, I’ve become more and more interested in it because it seems to me to demand more engagement and thought, not to say faith, than do the more doctrinaire forms. In my personal development I have come to value inclusiveness very highly in all areas of life – the more of life, the more people and points of view I exclude, the less rich is my intellectual life – and I find RJ, and this congregation in particular to be explicitly inclusive, to the extent that even non-Jews are welcome and part of the community. This fits for me.
Mostly, though, RJ has caused me to really think about God and Torah, outside the bounds of doctrine. This has taken me, particularly lately, to thinking about what might be the fundamental message of the Torah – that which is behind the arcane rules about sacrifices and the stories of people being struck dead, that which is the real essence of being a Jew and maybe of being a human being. In preparing various divrei Torah over the past weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that underneath it all the Torah is teaching us two things: first, that God is One. Not that there is one God - that may have been news in Abraham’s time but not now – but that God is a whole – all of it, everything – that there is nothing outside God and that good and evil are under our control and consist of our choices to turn toward or away from God.
Second to the oneness of God is the admonition to “be holy, for God is holy.” Said another way, to live in imitation of God. For this, the Torah is an instruction manual, but one that is meant to be read metaphorically not literally. The dietary laws, for example, tell us which qualities God means for us to incorporate (e.g., cleanliness, humility, living together in peace) and which God wants us to reject (e.g., predation, isolation, ferocity). The repeated injunctions to remember our slavery in Egypt and the Exodus can be understood to be reminders to treat others with dignity and compassion and to remember that, though we were chosen by God, we have been at the bottom of the social ladder many times in our existence.
So I’ve come to really value and respect Reform Judaism – with its commitments to thinking for oneself, to inclusion, to equality of all genders and orientations, to tikkun olam, and most of all to being able to be Jews without divorcing ourselves from the modern world.
Tazria-Metzora
This week’s Torah portion is a double one - Thazria and Metzora (Leviticus XII - XIII and XIV – XV). After last week’s recounting of what animals are clean and unclean, we move into the rules for people – what constitutes being clean and unclean, and if one is unclean for whatever reason, how to become clean again.
In addition, this is Shabbat Hachodesh, the Shabbat at the beginning of the month of Nisan, when Passover occurs, and we also read the passage from Exodus XII: 1-20 that establishes the basis for Passover and Nisan as the first month of the calendar (though the spiritual year begins with Rosh Hashana).
My reading on the Torah portion suggested that there are two ways to look at the whole business of clean and unclean – hygienically and spiritually. Commandment Judaism takes these verses quite literally – every Orthodox community includes a Mikvah – a ritual bath – to be used for ritual cleansing, and the rules regarding childbirth, sexual contact, etc. are scrupulously adhered to. But most progressive Jewish scholars see the rules as more metaphorical. Remember, the context for the whole book of Leviticus is the injunction “You shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God am holy,” and the Shema, proclaiming that God is one – that there is no “other,” nothing that is outside God.
In this reading the rules of cleanliness and uncleanliness reflect the struggle of human beings between good and evil, between life and death. If there is nothing outside God, then, really, evil is an illusion – the choice people have is between moving toward God, being like God (‘holy for I am holy”) or moving away from God – not physically, that’s impossible, but in their minds and hearts. When we read about which animals are permitted to eat, the progressive interpretation was that what was in question was not the inherent worth or even the cleanliness of the animals, but the qualities of the animals that would bring us closer to God or, in the case, for example, of ferocious predators, take us farther from God.
In this regard, two things stand out for me from the Torah portions. First, the question that has troubled women and particularly feminists for a long time – it is the one that opens the chapter. When a woman has given birth, she is then unclean and must be cleansed and offer sacrifices both in thanksgiving and in atonement for sin before she can rejoin the community. Whatever they may have thought 5000 years ago, we know today that there is nothing sinful or unclean about childbirth. And could they really have thought so then? Not likely, given one of God’s first commandments to Adam and Eve was to “be fruitful and multiply.” So what then? One possibility that has been advanced is that the real issue is not cleanliness but life – creating life is a holy act – it brings us closer to God – and when a woman is carrying a baby, she has a double portion of life – hers and the baby’s. When the baby is born, while that life continues in the new person, the woman has lost a portion of the life she contained, and the cleansing, prayer, and sacrifices are a way for her to deal with the loss – kind of an early treatment for post-partum depression. Incidentally, a woman who gives birth to a girl has twice the atonement to do than one who gives birth to a boy. Because girls are more unclean? No – because in giving birth to a girl, a bearer of life, she gives up twice as much life that was in her than in giving birth to a boy.
The second area the portion deals with is more obscure. The Torah speaks of a disease called tzara’a. No one really knows what this disease is. It is traditionally translated as leprosy, but everyone agrees that this does not refer to the physical disease called Hansen’s Disease. Rather, the Torah refers to spots appearing first on the wall of a person’s house, then on the person’s clothes, and finally on the person’s skin. The Rabbis (and here commandment and progressive Judaism seem in agreement) interpret the Torah to be saying that the disease, whatever it was, was a consequence of spreading gossip or slander. In Hebrew this is called lashon hara – a bad tongue, and the prohibition against lashon hara is one of the oldest and strongest in Judaism. The Talmud says that we as Jews are forbidden to say anything bad or negative about a person even if it is true – an early version of “if you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.” Imagine – what a discipline. In fact, I suggest you try it for a couple of days or a week and see how hard it is – the only exception is if the purpose of saying it is to improve the condition you are referring to, and that means saying it to the person directly or not at all. The Torah recognizes in this the enormous destructive power of gossip and slander (slander is gossip that is not true). One of the things I’ve learned in my years as a psychologist and a consultant is how strongly we human beings are given to negativity. I have yet to tell me what possible benefit there could be in your coming to me to tell me what a jerk Joe is. What people usually say, if pressed, is either that “it’s true,” as if that somehow made it beneficial or valuable, or that they were “just talking” as if words had no power. But just imagine for a second. You come to me and tell me that Joe is a jerk. I then go and tell someone else, who tells someone else, and pretty soon Joe lives in a community consisting of people who, without knowing why, consider him a jerk, and are sure it must be true because, after all, “everyone says so!”
I worked with a consultant once who had a standing bet that he could bring down any organization of any size in six months to a year through gossip alone. People pooh-poohed the idea, but never, to my knowledge, did anyone take him up on the bet.
I don’t know if it’s possible to root out gossip – the lashon hara seems to be the most visible and one of the nastiest manifestations of the yetzer hara – the evil inclination in human beings. I do know, and can tell you from experience, that the more I try to live in the discipline of not speaking negatively about other people (and I probably fail as much as I succeed at this), the better my life seems to go.
The other Torah portion this week is the story of the first Passover. It is meant to remind us that Pesach is coming and we need to prepare. Again here, we have cleanliness as a connection to moving toward God – for Passover, instead of slaughtering and eating a lamb, we are to cleanse our house of chametz – anything that could contain leaven, particularly the five grains – barley, rye, oats, wheat, and spelt. Over the years, particularly among Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazim) this rule has been expanded to include rice, peas, peanuts, millet, beans, sesame seeds, and a variety of other things including some that make so sense at all – wild rice is forbidden to Ashkenazim because the Rabbis thought it was rice, when it is really a grass, and corn, which was unknown in Europe until the 16th Century, is forbidden, probably because “corn” sounds like “kern,” the Yiddish word for “rye.” Sephardim have it much easier – they are forbidden only the 5 grains and eat all the rest of that stuff.
But whatever you do or don’t eat, what is important is the separation of Passover from the rest of the year in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, the turning toward God and remembering what He did for us. In my view that’s what all of this is about – turning toward God and having the turning create a separation between clean and unclean, good and bad, sacred and profane – because that is what it is to “be holy” – to be kadosh is to be distinct, to be separate from those things that turn us away from God – that is the real choice we have as human beings – which way we turn.
In addition, this is Shabbat Hachodesh, the Shabbat at the beginning of the month of Nisan, when Passover occurs, and we also read the passage from Exodus XII: 1-20 that establishes the basis for Passover and Nisan as the first month of the calendar (though the spiritual year begins with Rosh Hashana).
My reading on the Torah portion suggested that there are two ways to look at the whole business of clean and unclean – hygienically and spiritually. Commandment Judaism takes these verses quite literally – every Orthodox community includes a Mikvah – a ritual bath – to be used for ritual cleansing, and the rules regarding childbirth, sexual contact, etc. are scrupulously adhered to. But most progressive Jewish scholars see the rules as more metaphorical. Remember, the context for the whole book of Leviticus is the injunction “You shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God am holy,” and the Shema, proclaiming that God is one – that there is no “other,” nothing that is outside God.
In this reading the rules of cleanliness and uncleanliness reflect the struggle of human beings between good and evil, between life and death. If there is nothing outside God, then, really, evil is an illusion – the choice people have is between moving toward God, being like God (‘holy for I am holy”) or moving away from God – not physically, that’s impossible, but in their minds and hearts. When we read about which animals are permitted to eat, the progressive interpretation was that what was in question was not the inherent worth or even the cleanliness of the animals, but the qualities of the animals that would bring us closer to God or, in the case, for example, of ferocious predators, take us farther from God.
In this regard, two things stand out for me from the Torah portions. First, the question that has troubled women and particularly feminists for a long time – it is the one that opens the chapter. When a woman has given birth, she is then unclean and must be cleansed and offer sacrifices both in thanksgiving and in atonement for sin before she can rejoin the community. Whatever they may have thought 5000 years ago, we know today that there is nothing sinful or unclean about childbirth. And could they really have thought so then? Not likely, given one of God’s first commandments to Adam and Eve was to “be fruitful and multiply.” So what then? One possibility that has been advanced is that the real issue is not cleanliness but life – creating life is a holy act – it brings us closer to God – and when a woman is carrying a baby, she has a double portion of life – hers and the baby’s. When the baby is born, while that life continues in the new person, the woman has lost a portion of the life she contained, and the cleansing, prayer, and sacrifices are a way for her to deal with the loss – kind of an early treatment for post-partum depression. Incidentally, a woman who gives birth to a girl has twice the atonement to do than one who gives birth to a boy. Because girls are more unclean? No – because in giving birth to a girl, a bearer of life, she gives up twice as much life that was in her than in giving birth to a boy.
The second area the portion deals with is more obscure. The Torah speaks of a disease called tzara’a. No one really knows what this disease is. It is traditionally translated as leprosy, but everyone agrees that this does not refer to the physical disease called Hansen’s Disease. Rather, the Torah refers to spots appearing first on the wall of a person’s house, then on the person’s clothes, and finally on the person’s skin. The Rabbis (and here commandment and progressive Judaism seem in agreement) interpret the Torah to be saying that the disease, whatever it was, was a consequence of spreading gossip or slander. In Hebrew this is called lashon hara – a bad tongue, and the prohibition against lashon hara is one of the oldest and strongest in Judaism. The Talmud says that we as Jews are forbidden to say anything bad or negative about a person even if it is true – an early version of “if you can’t say something good, don’t say anything at all.” Imagine – what a discipline. In fact, I suggest you try it for a couple of days or a week and see how hard it is – the only exception is if the purpose of saying it is to improve the condition you are referring to, and that means saying it to the person directly or not at all. The Torah recognizes in this the enormous destructive power of gossip and slander (slander is gossip that is not true). One of the things I’ve learned in my years as a psychologist and a consultant is how strongly we human beings are given to negativity. I have yet to tell me what possible benefit there could be in your coming to me to tell me what a jerk Joe is. What people usually say, if pressed, is either that “it’s true,” as if that somehow made it beneficial or valuable, or that they were “just talking” as if words had no power. But just imagine for a second. You come to me and tell me that Joe is a jerk. I then go and tell someone else, who tells someone else, and pretty soon Joe lives in a community consisting of people who, without knowing why, consider him a jerk, and are sure it must be true because, after all, “everyone says so!”
I worked with a consultant once who had a standing bet that he could bring down any organization of any size in six months to a year through gossip alone. People pooh-poohed the idea, but never, to my knowledge, did anyone take him up on the bet.
I don’t know if it’s possible to root out gossip – the lashon hara seems to be the most visible and one of the nastiest manifestations of the yetzer hara – the evil inclination in human beings. I do know, and can tell you from experience, that the more I try to live in the discipline of not speaking negatively about other people (and I probably fail as much as I succeed at this), the better my life seems to go.
The other Torah portion this week is the story of the first Passover. It is meant to remind us that Pesach is coming and we need to prepare. Again here, we have cleanliness as a connection to moving toward God – for Passover, instead of slaughtering and eating a lamb, we are to cleanse our house of chametz – anything that could contain leaven, particularly the five grains – barley, rye, oats, wheat, and spelt. Over the years, particularly among Eastern European Jews (Ashkenazim) this rule has been expanded to include rice, peas, peanuts, millet, beans, sesame seeds, and a variety of other things including some that make so sense at all – wild rice is forbidden to Ashkenazim because the Rabbis thought it was rice, when it is really a grass, and corn, which was unknown in Europe until the 16th Century, is forbidden, probably because “corn” sounds like “kern,” the Yiddish word for “rye.” Sephardim have it much easier – they are forbidden only the 5 grains and eat all the rest of that stuff.
But whatever you do or don’t eat, what is important is the separation of Passover from the rest of the year in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, the turning toward God and remembering what He did for us. In my view that’s what all of this is about – turning toward God and having the turning create a separation between clean and unclean, good and bad, sacred and profane – because that is what it is to “be holy” – to be kadosh is to be distinct, to be separate from those things that turn us away from God – that is the real choice we have as human beings – which way we turn.
9/11/2001
On a wall in a cellar in Cologne, Germany, where Jews had hidden from the Nazis, there was found an inscription. The anonymous author who perished with his fellow victims left behind these words: "I believe in the sun even when it's not shining. I believe in love even when not feeling it. I believe in God even when He is silent."
Normally on Rosh Hashana I address the state of our congregation and our community, kind of an “state of NTHC” report. I will try to touch on this in my remarks on Yom Kippur, but today I want to address something more pressing, namely the need for us as Jews to speak out in the current national crisis.
The world is a bit less than it was a week ago.
· A little less safe
· A little less certain
· A little less civilized
· A little less human.
People have compared the attack on September 11th to Pearl Harbor, but the similarities are superficial at best. Pearl Harbor was an attack by an established, military force against military targets; yes there were civilian casualties – too many of them – but they were collateral to the military nature of the operation. Sneak attack, yes, but sneak attacks as a military tactic go back to the Trojan Horse and before. The attack on America last week was a cowardly assault on targets that can only be seen as civilian in nature. Even the Pentagon has many more civilians than military personnel.
I was in the San Francisco Bay Area when the attack occurred, and was astonished at the degree to which this attack, 2500 miles away seemed to have personally touched each person I met. Our son Eric’s office is across the street from the World Trade Center. He was there just after the second plane hit and (thank G-d) got home safely to Brooklyn before the buildings collapsed. Others I spoke with had friends, family, and relatives in New York, at the World Trade Center, in Washington. One man who lives barely 5 minutes from the Pentagon did not know, as late as 5 pm our time, that anything had happened.
Within hours, US residents of Arab descent or extraction and US Arab groups were attacked, a mosque in Seattle was burned, shots were fired, and yesterday a Sikh in Arizona was shot – a Sikh is about as related to anything that has happened as is a Tibetan Buddhist. Within days right-wing talk radio was filled with callers using the occasion to beat the drums for their favorite racist cause – close the borders to Mexicans, stop supporting Israel, you name it.
Within hours, the fringe on the left was also heard, lamenting that we (the U.S., Israel, the West, whoever “we” are) had driven the poor oppressed terrorists to this extreme. I heard many times that “we have to get to the origin of this – what makes people into terrorists.” One person even said that Osama bin Laden (may his name be erased) was once an 8 or 10 or 12 year old boy and somehow this meant he should not have come to such a place as he is in now. No mention was made of the people on the planes or in the buildings or the rescuers who were, presumably also once 8 or 10 or 12 years old, and who did not deserve to die on September 11th.
What nonsense. What unadulterated, self-serving, myopic drivel on both sides. The facts are plain here, a week later. Fanatics, using religion as the content of their fanaticism, perpetrated the most heinous act of mass murder in history, and in so doing created a de facto state of war, not only with the United States but with all of humanity that is deserving of the name. No decent human being, regardless of race, religion, culture or ethnicity can fail to condemn this atrocity against innocent civilians, without regard to the race, religion, culture, or ethnicity of those victims. No decent human being can fail to condemn an attack on innocent victims, using other innocent victims as weapons. No decent human being can fail to condemn the use of suicide bombing as a tactic. In World War II we were appalled at the Japanese military personnel who committed suicide raids as kamikaze bombers, but those were military men, making a personal decision, and taking only their own life in the attempt. These arrogant cowards took innocent airline passengers with them to add to the horror of the event.
And no decent human being can stand any longer for the teaching of hate and the glorification of terrorism in elementary and secondary schools. Anyone asking “how are terrorists created?” need look no farther than the schools of Gaza, and the West Bank, and the massaras of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Talmud teaches that each individual human life is sacred, that he who saves one life saves all of humanity. Clearly the version of Islam that the terrorists subscribe to does not hold to this truth. They have forfeited the right to be considered decent human beings, to be considered anything but criminals comparable to those who stood in the dock at Nuremberg.
Last week one individual lost no time writing a letter to the Bonanza and the Reno Gazette-Journal blaming this terrorist act on US support of Israel. My response to this anti-semitic diatribe will be published in tomorrow’s Bonanza and in the Gazette Journal, signed in my capacity as president of your congregation. That same day other ignoramuses sought to use the occasion to vent their spleen against other groups. No one, to my knowledge, has attacked Jews directly, but “Israel” and “Zionism” have long been code words for “Jews” for anti-semites.
We must not be silent. It will be too easy for right- and left-wing fringe reaction to this to turn on us as Jews, particularly if, as is likely, President Bush’s declared war on terrorism results in American losses and/or further terrorist acts and attempts against the US. We must learn from the mistakes of American and European Jewish communities before World War II, who remained silent too long. We must speak out in support of President Bush, regardless of our domestic politics or parties. The war against terrorism is a war against the enemies of Israel and of Judaism. I ask that you look for opportunities to speak out as individuals and for your Board and officers to speak out for the congregation. Write letters, call talk shows, do what you can.
Edmund Burke, the 18th century English statesman said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Let us not contribute to the triumph, or even the temporary victories of evil through our silence.
Normally on Rosh Hashana I address the state of our congregation and our community, kind of an “state of NTHC” report. I will try to touch on this in my remarks on Yom Kippur, but today I want to address something more pressing, namely the need for us as Jews to speak out in the current national crisis.
The world is a bit less than it was a week ago.
· A little less safe
· A little less certain
· A little less civilized
· A little less human.
People have compared the attack on September 11th to Pearl Harbor, but the similarities are superficial at best. Pearl Harbor was an attack by an established, military force against military targets; yes there were civilian casualties – too many of them – but they were collateral to the military nature of the operation. Sneak attack, yes, but sneak attacks as a military tactic go back to the Trojan Horse and before. The attack on America last week was a cowardly assault on targets that can only be seen as civilian in nature. Even the Pentagon has many more civilians than military personnel.
I was in the San Francisco Bay Area when the attack occurred, and was astonished at the degree to which this attack, 2500 miles away seemed to have personally touched each person I met. Our son Eric’s office is across the street from the World Trade Center. He was there just after the second plane hit and (thank G-d) got home safely to Brooklyn before the buildings collapsed. Others I spoke with had friends, family, and relatives in New York, at the World Trade Center, in Washington. One man who lives barely 5 minutes from the Pentagon did not know, as late as 5 pm our time, that anything had happened.
Within hours, US residents of Arab descent or extraction and US Arab groups were attacked, a mosque in Seattle was burned, shots were fired, and yesterday a Sikh in Arizona was shot – a Sikh is about as related to anything that has happened as is a Tibetan Buddhist. Within days right-wing talk radio was filled with callers using the occasion to beat the drums for their favorite racist cause – close the borders to Mexicans, stop supporting Israel, you name it.
Within hours, the fringe on the left was also heard, lamenting that we (the U.S., Israel, the West, whoever “we” are) had driven the poor oppressed terrorists to this extreme. I heard many times that “we have to get to the origin of this – what makes people into terrorists.” One person even said that Osama bin Laden (may his name be erased) was once an 8 or 10 or 12 year old boy and somehow this meant he should not have come to such a place as he is in now. No mention was made of the people on the planes or in the buildings or the rescuers who were, presumably also once 8 or 10 or 12 years old, and who did not deserve to die on September 11th.
What nonsense. What unadulterated, self-serving, myopic drivel on both sides. The facts are plain here, a week later. Fanatics, using religion as the content of their fanaticism, perpetrated the most heinous act of mass murder in history, and in so doing created a de facto state of war, not only with the United States but with all of humanity that is deserving of the name. No decent human being, regardless of race, religion, culture or ethnicity can fail to condemn this atrocity against innocent civilians, without regard to the race, religion, culture, or ethnicity of those victims. No decent human being can fail to condemn an attack on innocent victims, using other innocent victims as weapons. No decent human being can fail to condemn the use of suicide bombing as a tactic. In World War II we were appalled at the Japanese military personnel who committed suicide raids as kamikaze bombers, but those were military men, making a personal decision, and taking only their own life in the attempt. These arrogant cowards took innocent airline passengers with them to add to the horror of the event.
And no decent human being can stand any longer for the teaching of hate and the glorification of terrorism in elementary and secondary schools. Anyone asking “how are terrorists created?” need look no farther than the schools of Gaza, and the West Bank, and the massaras of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Talmud teaches that each individual human life is sacred, that he who saves one life saves all of humanity. Clearly the version of Islam that the terrorists subscribe to does not hold to this truth. They have forfeited the right to be considered decent human beings, to be considered anything but criminals comparable to those who stood in the dock at Nuremberg.
Last week one individual lost no time writing a letter to the Bonanza and the Reno Gazette-Journal blaming this terrorist act on US support of Israel. My response to this anti-semitic diatribe will be published in tomorrow’s Bonanza and in the Gazette Journal, signed in my capacity as president of your congregation. That same day other ignoramuses sought to use the occasion to vent their spleen against other groups. No one, to my knowledge, has attacked Jews directly, but “Israel” and “Zionism” have long been code words for “Jews” for anti-semites.
We must not be silent. It will be too easy for right- and left-wing fringe reaction to this to turn on us as Jews, particularly if, as is likely, President Bush’s declared war on terrorism results in American losses and/or further terrorist acts and attempts against the US. We must learn from the mistakes of American and European Jewish communities before World War II, who remained silent too long. We must speak out in support of President Bush, regardless of our domestic politics or parties. The war against terrorism is a war against the enemies of Israel and of Judaism. I ask that you look for opportunities to speak out as individuals and for your Board and officers to speak out for the congregation. Write letters, call talk shows, do what you can.
Edmund Burke, the 18th century English statesman said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Let us not contribute to the triumph, or even the temporary victories of evil through our silence.
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