The World to Come

Chevruta study links us with another person and so creates the future.

In Chapter Seven of Rabbi Stone's A Responsible Life, which we are reading in my 613 Habits of Highly Effective People class, a new and surprising understanding of Olam HaZeh and Olam HaBa appears. I want to summarize this dense chapter here for those in the class but I will do so by addressing the topics of present, future and past in a different order. Interspersed with the summary are my own interpretations of Rabbi Stone's ideas.

The past is pure spirituality. That is, it is not material - we can't touch it. Nonetheless, it is more than memory because it has a real effect on our lives. It shapes us. What makes the past Torah is the extent to which that shaping of our lives is purposeful. A whole series of events in the past may affect my life, but those might just be a collection of random experiences that have no purpose. But the Torah, the revelation, of the Jewish past, is trying to shape my life in a particular direction: cultural memory, the teachings of the Jewish tradition, the mitzvot, these all are trying to make me act in a certain way. The past reaches into the material world to guide it.

The present is where I exist. To exist in the present is to be conscious. Consciousness is most immediately tied to one's own experience, one's own needs. What it means to be me is to see the world through the lens of my consciousness of my own perceptions and needs. In this sense, the self is the "location" of the present.

This present is 'olam hazeh' - this world, the material world.

The present (the world of self) is interrupted by the awareness of the needs of another person, awareness of the reality of another consciousness that exists along with us. We suspend our interest in the self - we set aside the present - when we encounter another and we therefore have to look to the future to return to our self, with all of its demands on us. This is what Rabbi Stone means when he says that "waiting for another creates the future for me." If we sit and stare at our belly button, and a needy person knocks at the door looking for food, we stop staring at our belly button and think "I'll get back to that later, in the future" as we go to answer the door. That is a silly illustration of what he means.

The future is 'olam haba' - the world to come, a world that is both material (there is another physical being that causes it to exist) and yet spiritual (the process of waiting for time to pass is a spiritual experience, according to Stone).

We move between olam ha-zeh and olam ha-ba as we switch between a consciousness focused on self and a consciousness focused on others. Though orientation toward others is "responsibility" and in this sense is a burden, it is also liberating, freeing us from the unsatisfying entrapment in the prison of the present and the prison of self.

Apologies to Rabbi Stone for any possible misrepresentations of his ideas that may appear in this post.

Chevrutah, Part II

Some of you in my mussar class (The 613 Habits of Highly Effective People) are pressing against the limits of chevruta. You wonder about the propriety of moving beyond the text of the class to the personal, you are afraid to do so. I wrote previously that chevruta study should not be limited to the text (nor can it be free of the text) that you are studying. It must include reflections from your own life and tales from your own experience.

But in our society, so focused around the sanctity of private space, sharing deeply emotional experiences is unusual - and even "impolite." But Torah is illuminated when lived experience confronts tradition and each informs the other. What prevents us from opening to others in this way? Why do we cover up - and what are we covering up?

We follow in these weeks the story of Joseph. Throughout the story Joseph is covered up and then revealed. His famous katonet pasim, the "technicolor dreamcoat" is a source of his brother's envy. They strip it off of him. In the house of Potiphar, his refuge in Egypt, Potiphar's wife strips Joseph's clothes off of him. Eventually he will be dressed in the clothes of an Egyptian nobleman and his brothers will not recognize him.

This cycle of enrobement and revelation has its emotional counterpart this week, in Parshat Vayigash. Judah, unaware that he is speaking to the brother that he nearly killed, pleads with Joseph to have mercy on the brothers. Finally, Joseph "was no longer able to hold back" and bursts into tears. "I am Joseph" he reveals.

The Sefat Emet points out that this is preceded by Judah's speech, which begins "Judah approached him" (Gen 44.18). He writes

The 'him' here refers to Joseph, to Judah's own self, and also to God. The meaning is as follows: Judah offered nothing new in his words [that is, there was no argument here that the brother's had not previously made to Joseph] nor did he have a good claim with which to approach Joseph. But as he clarified the truth of the matter, salvation came to him. 'Truth grows from the earth' (Ps 85.12).

The Sefat Emet suggests that in Judah's approaching Joseph there was immense power. The act of reaching out beyond the boundary of self was revelatory. It cut through Joseph's pretense so that he could no longer be false and v'hitapek, "he could no longer hold back." Joseph's reaction is to finally reveal the truth, "I am Joseph."

But the Sefat Emet is also pointing out to us that this psychological unveiling is at the same time a spiritual revelation. He renders the verse as "Judah approached God." As Judah reaches across the boundary of self, cuts through the cloak of concealment and defense he also reaches across the boundary of the material into the divine within himself and his brother.

I want to suggest the chevruta learning has the same potential. We can cut through the falsity and pretense that we use to get through the business of everyday life in these moments. There is nothing inherently bad about our initial reluctance to reveal something real from our own experience. We need these garments of self and identity in order to function in the world.

But two souls revealing something more true beneath the veil have the ability to uncover great truth and to access the deeper divinity that is trying to reveal itself - that source of divinity that is trying to make itself manifest through the process of self-examination and teshuvah that is part of mussar.

But it starts with one of the two people in the chevruta "approaching" first - just as Judah had the courage to do.

Nietzsche is Dead, part II

I pointed in the last post on this topic to an article from nytimes.com about religion in the modern world. The article points out that the truth claims of religion have been limited by modernity.

I see two points in the article. First, in modern, diverse democracies, multiple truths are accepted as legitimate. In the absence of any broad shared Truth (capital T truth) we use tolerance as a way to live together. In the good old days, we could condemn a heretic because they rejected a truth that was universally accepted. In the more complicated modern world no one has the authority to say that someone's take on Truth is wrong. This is the 'practical' problem of religion in modern society - our diverse society just can't function without a very broad and deep tolerance of multiple Truth systems.

Is anyone still reading? The second limit on religious truth claims in the modern world is not practical but substantive: science and history have decimated traditional religious views, at least in the realm of the 'revealed' religions.

These are two distinct problems and I won't deal with either of them here! I will deal with them both eventually.

Let me just say two things: first, I don't have a definitive answer to these problems. I struggle with this essential problem often, constantly, but I have been unable to resolve it in a way that the philosophically trained part of me finds satisfactory.

Ultimately the part of me that continues to need and affirm my relationship to the Holy One simply trumps my philosophical impulses. To those reading (?) who are inclined toward rationalism - or rather those whose rationalism is totalizing - that will sound ludicrous. And I can actually empathize with, I can inhabit, that view.

I feel very much of two minds. It is as though there are two distinct consciousnesses within me that really should not be able to live together but do. And their cohabitation (!) is not due to their harmony. It is due ultimately to my emunah that there is something true but unresolved in their cohabitation.

Ultimately I believe that this philosophically trained part of me is blind so something that is more elemental and true. What that is, and why that is, cannot, by necessity, be explained rationally. Nor can I convince anyone of it.

Nietzsche is Dead, and We Have Killed Him

Great article in the New York Times online "The Stone" section, which deals with philosophical issues as they pertain to contemporary culture. The author is Sean Kelly of Harvard's Philosophy Department.

He writes about whether it is possible, in an era when belief in God is no longer central to the culture's claims about truth, to have a religious belief with integrity.

One can imagine a happy suburban member of a religious congregation who, in addition to finding fulfillment for herself in her lofty and ennobling religious pursuits, experiences the aspiration to this kind of fulfillment as one demanded of all other human beings as well. Indeed, one can imagine that the kind of fulfillment she experiences through her own religious commitments depends upon her experiencing those commitments as universal, and therefore depends upon her experiencing those people not living in the fold of her church as somehow living depleted or unfulfilled lives. I suppose this is not an impossible case. But if this is the kind of fulfillment one achieves through one’s happy suburban religious pursuit, then in our culture today it is self-deception at best and fanaticism at worst. For it stands in constant tension with the demand in the culture to recognize that those who don’t share your religious commitments might nevertheless be living admirable lives. There is therefore a kind of happiness in a suburban life like this. But its continuation depends upon deceiving oneself about the role that any kind of religious commitment can now play in grounding the meanings for a life.

This is the tension for the modern religious person. I wonder about his premise in this passage, though. Does it have to be the case that a person who experiences the hold of God in her life sees those without that experience as living diminished or "untrue" lives? Is there such a thing as religious humility?

More on this later...

I Found a Chevruta Partner - Now What?

In response to some queries about how chevruta should work, I want to post some thoughts on how you might approach this powerful Jewish learning methodology.

Both partners should arrive at the learning session having read the text.

Both partners should bring a copy of the text they are studying. Trade off reading out loud to one another, one bit at a time. Sometimes this bit will be a whole paragraph, sometimes just a sentence, and sometimes even just a word. It depends on what you find in it.

After you've read the paragraph or sentence, go back over it to make sure you've understood the most basic meaning. What is the author saying?

If you are the kind of person who is quite shy, make sure you are contributing to the conversation. If you are the kind of person who loves to talk and is brimming over with thoughts about the text, make sure you make plenty of space in the conversation for your partner to participate.

Keep in mind that every person has something unique to bring to the text. If you hold back your insights, or if you prevent your partner from participating, you are silencing the insights, culled from a lifetime of experience of being a human, that are waiting to come out.

What are your reactions to the text? Do you agree with it? Does it resonate with other things you believe? Do you disagree? Why? How does one paragraph connect to the next - is there an argument that is being built? What are the assumptions of the text? What assertions about human nature are being made? What assertions about God are being made?

What are your emotional responses to the text (this may not always apply, of course)? Chevruta study doesn't have to be a mere intellectual exchange. If you find your anger swelling at a certain passage, or if you are particularly moved by a particular passage, that's important. Delve deeper to find out what about the passage is hitting you so hard.

The conversation should be informed by your life experience. The conversation should absolutely drift from the text at times so you or your partner can "open up" or clarify a certain passage with insights from personal experience. How far afield you run will depend on your judgment, and your partner's, as to how valuable the conversation is. However, you should avoid the temptation to read one paragraph and then have it become a schmooze session. Make time to schmooze afterward. Make sure you return to the text.

Don't feel that the primary purpose is to get through the entire chapter. All things being equal, if you have enough time, or if you are meeting more than once between classes, this is the best thing. But if you are rushing through the text just to finish, you are shutting down all the best parts of the conversation. At the same time, if you only cover one paragraph in the session, you won't really have a chance to engage with the work.

It is 'ok' not to agree with the text. Keep in mind that Orchot Tzaddikim is 550 years old! You need to avoid simply giving up on the text. This wouldn't be giving kavod to this teaching which has touched so many lives.

Make notes about the parts that bother you. There can often be great insights that emerge from disagreeing with a passage if you can be patient enough to stick with the text and explore where it is coming from and then articulate where you are coming from.

You and your partner may disagree about the value of a passage, or even about its meaning. It is important to explore those disagreements. But do so with a sense of respect and humility. The point of chevruta is very much NOT to convince the other person that they are wrong. I would expect that many disagreements will simply be left unresolved.

Your book should look messy with pencil marks, underlines, marginal notes, and questions when you are done.

There are some further resources here.

Mussar Resources

I promised to post some online mussar resources. Here they are. These might be helpful for those who need to delve further into the middah that they have chosen (of course, these may also be useful for the middah - currently anavah, or humility - that the class is working on together).

Your individual middah may or may not be covered by the resources below. If you cannot find resources on your middah, please send me an email so we can find out how to connect you with the teachings you need.

1) http://www.mussarleadership.org/ This is the website of Rabbi Ira Stone, whose book, "A Responsible Life," we are reading in the class.

Go to "Mussar Pathways" along the top menu; select "Middot" and then choose one of the middot. For many but not all of these, Rabbi Stone has written an essay exploring the topic in some depth.

2) Alan Morinis' Mussar Institute lists some online English mussar classics. Please let me know if you want to pursue this route so I can aid you in your learning. The links are at http://www.mussarinstitute.org/wisdom-way.htm

Within You Without You

There are two tensions in the practice of Mussar that are important for us to talk about.

First is the tension between the physical and spiritual dimensions of change. We can change our behavior but not go the next step of transforming ourselves internally. For example, a person might be trying to become more generous (in relationships, with money, etc). Through mussar practice, one could be trained in a kind of Pavlovian way, to perform the right actions. So, you make it a habit to give money, you make it a habit to make sure that people you are in relationship with are taken care of. Yet, internally, your spirit is in rebellion against this and constantly resenting your giving, dubious about the needs of others versus your own needs. This is not the goal of mussar. We are striving to change internally as well - though this may begin with reluctant acts in the physical world. Ultimately, mussar practice is pointing to a higher consciousness, toward a unity underlying all physical existence, so that the practitioner becomes more aware of this deeper reality and more willing, therefore, with the ethical dictates that flow from it.

The second tension is between an awareness of one's flaws and a sense of magnificent spiritual potential within each individual. Mussar practice begins with a very deep sense of self-awareness. The self-aware person will see the many shortcomings, missed opportunities, wasted time, selfish and cruel acts, misguided strivings, etc, etc, that is at the heart of so much of our time here. This self-awareness can lead to a sense of shame and a very low and dejected spirit. If this low state persists, it will become impossible to ascend to the next level - we can't lift ourselves up if we are always focused on our shameful character. The Aish Kodesh (I'm on a big Aish Kodesh trip right now and you will continue to hear much about him in the coming weeks) writes about the impossibility of drawing down Torah from heaven when we are in such a debased state. It becomes impossible to access and draw out the divine potential that is within us if we are blinded to it.

The answer is of course not to try to lower of our self-awareness - ultimately our ability to transcend our current state hinges on our capacity to see a brilliant light within ourselves. The challenge is to see ourselves as complex beings who have a deep core of holiness but who are guided away from that and are led to be out of touch with that. Rav Simchah Bunam famously taught that we should have in one pocket a note that says "I am but dust and ashes" and in the other pocket a note that says "For my sake the world was created." The trick is to know when to reach for each one.

Finally, the lyrics to George Harrison's "Within You Without You" are either terribly insightful, or just ludicrous. But the title fits here, and it's a great song:



We were talking-about the space between us all
And the people-who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion
Never glimpse the truth-then it's far too late-when they pass away.
We were talking-about the love we all could share-when we find it
To try our best to hold it there-with our love
With our love-we could save the world-if they only knew.
Try to realize it's all within yourself
No-one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small,
And life flows ON within you and without you.
We were talking-about the love that's gone so cold and the people,
Who gain the world and lose their soul-
They don't know-they can't see-are you one of them?
When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,
Is waiting there-
And the time will come when you see
we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

Lashon Ha-Ra no.3: Last Words on Lashon HaRa

1) Please share your thoughts on the relationship between Lashon HaRa and idolatry in the comments section below.

2) I want to relate a story about the Chofetz Chayim (see previous post). It is suspiciously similar to a story about Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk that ends quite differently.

He was travelling on a train to another town, inconspicuous in simple garb. On the train he encountered a Jew and they be began to talk. After some time, the Chofetz Chayim asked him where he was going and he answered that he had heard that Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, the Chofetz Chayim, would be teaching in such and such a town, and he was going to hear this luminary among this generation, this incredibly pious and brilliant scholar.

"I know him," the Chofetz Chayim responds. "He's not so great." Outraged, the Jew slapped him. "How dare you speak in this way about such a Torah scholar!" They parted ways.

Later the man goes to see the Chofetz Chayim teach and, of course, recognizes him. Horrified, he approaches the Chofetz Chayim and apologizes profusely.

"Please, don't worry," says the Chofetz Chayim. "You taught me a great lesson. I knew, of course, that it is a great sin to speak lashon ha-ra about another person. But I did not know that it was also a great sin to speak lashon ha-ra against yourself."

Lashon Ha-Ra no.2: The Word on Bad Speech

For those who want to pursue learning on Lashon HaRa, the main source would be Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, known as the Chofetz Chayim, after the title of his book about Lashon Ha-Ra.

613 Habits - Lashon Ha Ra #1

This is the first of what will be several entries connected to my class, "The 613 Habits of Highly Effective People: Get Over Your Self." I am teaching about the spiritual discipline of mussar. The class will draw on several primary sources from the tradition, but principally is based on Orchot Tzaddikim (The Ways of the Righteous) and Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Upright). We will also use Rabbi Ira Stone's "A Responsible Life."

In this month's reading, "Sha'ar Lashon Ha-ra," which is translated by Rabbi Silverstein as "The Gate of Slander," there is a puzzling observation in the second (English) paragraph. The text reads,

Certainly, one who is given to slander removes from himself the yoke of Heaven, for he sins without pleasure and is worse than a thief or an adulterer, who pursue pleasure (Shochar Tov 120:3).

First of all, the "yoke of Heaven," (ol shamayim). This phrase denotes the acceptance of the obligation to live in accordance with the Divine will. The image seems to be one of a painful burden and when we read it we might say, "What am I, an ox? What a drag (pun intended)." If you allow the image to play out you might see it as more meaningful and beautiful. One of the reasons an animal carries a yoke is to pull a plow behind it. The plow digs into the earth to make possible the planting of seeds that will ultimately grow into something beneficial. We uphold the Torah because our goal is to turn the fallow fields of earthly life into something that is abundant with life and sustenance.

What about this idea that this is a more serious sin because we don't derive pleasure from it? I don't actually accept the premise. One of the reasons that lashon ha-ra is so easy to do is that it brings immense pleasure to the one who speaks it. Part of the pleasure is taking the person down a notch or too, perhaps satisfying some deep insecurity we have. That we satisfy this insecurity by our worst impulses (dragging someone down) rather than with our best (elevating ourselves) is one of the signals of the harm of lashon ha-ra: we damage ourselves in the process (as the Talmud says in Arachin 15b, "Lashon ha ra kills three people: The one who speaks it, the one who hears it and the one about whom it is spoken").

There is another pleasure in lashon ha-ra, and our desire for it actually stems from holiness: lashon hara creates solidarity between the speaker and the listener. There is a kind of warmth, the comfort of a bond between one person confiding something that is mutually morally repugnant to another person. This desire for connection and sympathy with others is essential to human holiness, but of course this particular expression of that desire is evil.

The Aish Kodesh writes that every thought, desire and deed that we have can be revealed to have at its core a dimension of holiness. Even within an act as ugly as lashon ha ra is the potential for holiness to be revealed. Lashon Ha-ra is an ugly garment covering, as it were, a light of holiness. While the teshuvah (repentance) that we must do begins by refraining from lashon ha-ra and making a good faith effort to undo damage that we have caused, it should also include an examination of the desire for holiness, warped as it may have been, that might have been at its core.

Does Hitch Pray?

The great Christopher Hitchens, with whom I do not always agree but from whom I always learn something, has cancer. There has been an interesting online debate recently about whether it is proper to pray for this evangelizing atheist.

In this video from the Atlantic he speaks with Jeffrey Goldberg about illness, atheism, agnosticism and prayer. Martin Amis joins in for a bit.

Gay Marriage Decision: A Victory for Jews

I can't make any comments on the legal thinking that went into the Prop 8 decision - some supporters of gay marriage are saying it was a bad decision because its breadth makes it an easy target for Supreme Court conservatives.

However, I do think that Jews should be happy with the outcome. Why? Because the only arguments against gay people marrying are arguments grounded in religion. Wha? Judaism is a religion, so we agree with them, right? Wrong.

While certainly there are many Jews who feel that the Torah calls on them to oppose loving intimate relationships between members of the same sex, that is not really the point (the Orthodox Union supported Prop 8). If we could have the state of Colorado enforce the laws of Shabbat as described in the Torah would we want that? Of course not, because we accept the principal of separation of church and state - we wouldn't want that any more than we would want the state to force people to observe Christian holidays.

And this is why even those Jews who consider themselves religiously bound to oppose gay relationships should celebrate. It is a victory for value-neutral secular law. That is good because it permits us to practice our religion, and permits our neighbors to practice theirs, but is doesn't allow us to force our views on them and visa versa.

If you have any doubts about who has the most at stake in the anti-gay marriage side, look no further than the Alliance Defense Fund. Their lawyers are litigating the case. Their website describes them as a "servant organization that provides the resources that will keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel through the legal defense and advocacy of religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values." The first two lines of their "Statement of Faith": "We believe the Bible to be the inspired, infallible, authoritative Word of God. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Do I want these people making laws about what kind of society I can live in? No more than I want the Orthodox Union to.

In a religiously diverse society, doesn't it make sense to have religiously-neutral laws that are non-coercive. Let's agree that no one should force anyone into a gay marriage - if you don't want one, don't have one. And no one should stop anyone else from having a gay marriage. Doesn't that allow for harmony in a diverse society?

And isn't it dangerous for Jews to support anti-democratic, religiously grounded arguments while living in a society that is 98% non Jewish?

Mosque at Ground Zero

It looks like the mosque to be built near the WTC site will go ahead. I think this is an excellent turn of events.

I was astonished to find the ADL's Abe Foxman on the wrong side of this issue. It seems to me that the only grounds for opposing the mosque is the charge that one of the supporters of the mosque is CAIR, which has been accused of having links to terrorist organizations. Those accusations don't appear to have much credibility. Foxman's argument, however, does not rest on links to CAIR (though he does allude to the need for more information about the mosque's backers) but rather on Americans sensitivity to having a mosque - apparently, any mosque - at this site. We should remember that the attack on America on 9/11 was an attack on all Americans - including on Muslim Americans.

Parshat Devarim - The Opportunity in Wilderness

Each of experiences a spiritual wilderness from time to time - we feel out of place, alienated from the very core of what we've become and who we are. There is a sense of being cast aside by our own lives and decisions - suddenly a world and way of living that felt rich and plentiful is burdensome and lifeless.

In the Torah portion this week Moses recounts the earlier episode when the Israelites, anxious that their journey will not end well, accuse God of bringing them out of slavery to die in the desert because God hates them.

The Zohar argues that this wandering into the wilderness was an opportunity. The wilderness is a place controlled by the 'sitra achra' - the forces that act against life and goodness. God prepared the journey so that Israel would have strength there and could vanquish those forces once and for all - by wanderin theough the darkness they could overcome it with internal strength. But the Israelites could only see the danger and not the opportunity.
We have to look again at these wilderness walks, their dry arid threats of danger and dissolution and disorientation, and see them not as places empty of meaning, but as places that challenge us to overcome them with internal strength. They are not wrong ways but are rather essential to our development.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Joshua Rose
303.499.7077
3950 Baseline Road
Boulder CO 80303

Shema, Yisra'el: Being Present

In the past two weeks I have been doing a lot of sitting in front of my computer, in between diaper changing, sleeping, feeding, and tending to both children. It's led me to more Face-booking, blog-reading, headline surfing.

I've accumulated and shared a lot of information, but what's been lost in this frenetic information exchange? I'm a physical presence, but I'm barely here.

The fundamental religious challenge for me right now is, I think, to try to maintain a sense of presence in the lives of those around me - to really listen - amidst the increasingly frantic pace. But also to maintain a kind of presence and groundedness in whatever it is that I'm doing. I know that the medium is only the medium, a tool is only a tool and all that, but there's something about computers that takes us away.

On that note, goodnight...

Time Out For Fun - New Baby Version

In something I wrote in honor of Eliav's birth, I quoted this song. So, here's another go for another baby. What a hat....

Baruch Ha-Ba

Channah and I welcomed our new baby into the world on Monday morning. A beautiful, huge tiny person, great sleeper and good eater. Pretty overwhelmed right now by the shower of blessings raining down. How to become worthy of that? . So, baruch haba, in the words of the traditional welcome.

(Bradley Shavit Artson wrote a great article on the meaning of baruch. In the context of the beracahot that we say over food or events, we usually translate it as "blessed" but that raises a theological puzzle. If God is blessed, who is doing the blessing? Obviously, humans - but if we stop blessing, is God no longer blessed? Artson argues that the word actually means bountiful, or abundant. So, "You are bountiful God, the one who brings bread from the earth." In the context of Baruch Ha-Ba, which we say to welcome someone (including a new baby), "blessed" makes more sense. I can't find the article online, but for those who care, Journal of Conservative Judaism, Winter 1994).

Reb Zalman encouraged Channah and I to "coo" possible names to the baby and mark his reaction so his neshama can weigh in on the decision. So, we will choose together in advance of the bris on Monday.

Tweeting the Torah

So I read online about a project to turn famous novels into Twitter messages. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables people to send 140 character messages to a list of subscribers.

So, here's the challenge: I'd love for the brave to take a crack at reducing a torah portion/book of the torah/entire torah to a tweet. 140 characters. This week's Torah portion is Terumah, Exodus 25:1 - 27:19. Give it a shot.

Hope v. Fear

Extraordinarily unsettling news out of Iran, as we have all heard. And while the dangers of a tyrannical and oppressive Islamist (as opposed to simply Muslim) regime acquiring a nuclear weapon cannot be turned away by words and hope alone, William Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech from 1949 inspires confidence. Hope is not enough, but any attempt to turn away such dread must be rooted in it.

Wednesday night at Har HaShem - Special Event

Gergg Drinkwater from Mosaic will be at Har HaShem on Wednesday night at 6:30 to talk about his work. Come join us. Here's the blurb:

In-Queeries into Torah
February 10th, 6:30pm
Congregation Har HaShem.

Gregg Drinkwater, co founder and director of Jewish Mosaic, will be at Har HaShem Wednesday February 10th at 6:30 pm. Gregg is co-editor, with the head of CU’s Jewish Studies Department Dr. David Schneer, of Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. The book is a collection of revelatory and incisive commentaries on the Torah portion from a LGBT perspective (or through a “bent lens,” as the book’s author’s write).

Gregg’s organization, Jewish Mosaic, was included three years running in “Slingshot,” a guide to “the most creative and effective [Jewish] organizations in America.” Jewish Mosaic encourages LGBT inclusion in Jewish life through advocacy, education, research and by increasing visibility of LGBT Jews in the community.

Gregg will talk about Torah Queeries and discuss how the Jewish world can be more inclusive

Rabbi Rose will participate by discussing the Jewish tradition’s perspectives on sexuality and how we can confront the tradition with our modern, egalitarian views while preserving ancient ideas about living in a holy way.

Israel Photography Trip from Boulder

I will likely lead another trip to Israel in 2011 but for those who have a particular interest in photography, Byahad Trex is leading a great trip in April.

Good Golem

Thanks to R, who sent me a great article on Professor Henry Makram's Blue Brain project to create consciousness from a computer. You can read it here.

The obvious point of reference for thinking about the meaning of artificial consciousness from a Jewish perspective is the golem. These legendary early animated non-human beings were imagined in the talmud. Significantly, they could be created only by righteous and learned rabbis. This introduces a measure of control over the animated being. Still, though, the golems that were created could wreak havoc. The presence of the world "emet" (truth) on their foreheads is significant for two reasons: one, it suggests that the being is subject to the normal laws of reality (this is my reading of this part of the legend) as we know them. Second, when the first letter of the word emet is erased, it becomes "met" (dead), and the being dies.

A good article on Golems here, Wikipedia entry here.

My tiny brain is not equipped to deal with the Jewish or ethical significance of this now real prospect. I'm going to do some reading on this over the next few months.

Economic Pressure on Israel....from the US

Interesting. George Mitchell (administration envoy for mideast peace) indicated in an interview (transcript is here) that one of the tools in the administration's belt in dealing with Israel is preventing loan guarantees.

As I've written before, I think that Israel's long-term security can only come from peace and stability - something that in my opinion its government is moving away from. Nonetheless, the administration must not use Israel's economic vulnerability against it - not good policy, not good for Israel.

If you are pro-Peace, and pro-Israel, as I am, and you think this is a good option for the US to wield, just think about how it could be used. If we go down the road of the US putting serious economic pressure on Israel, one can imagine Israel being put in a totally untenable position one day. Having to act against its security interests in order to avoid the danger of the loss of US aid.

The Administration is trying to walk it back by saying that he was taken out of context; that clearly, Mitchell was simply talking descriptively, not proscriptively, about the mechanisms that the US could use as leverage. That is, he was just saying that this was technically possible, and nothing more, in response to Rose asking him about possible options.

The transcript itself makes that pretty hard, if not impossible, to defend. My read is that he threw out there, in very careful terms, a very mild and vague warning. He even suggests – depending on how you understand his subsequent remarks – that this is something that the Administration is “discussing.” Obviously it’s not to be understood as a suggestion he’s making for US policy, but a subtle message to the Israelis, “we’re not screwing around.” I just think a guy as diplomatically experienced as Mitchell – which is to say, very – doesn’t throw around such things by accident.

What's strange is how little play this is getting in various media. I can't find anything on it from NYT or CNN. It is very big news in Israel. Reuters has a good read on the Israeli reaction here. The article notes that Israel doesn't intend to use guarantees at least for the next two years.

Time Out for Fun - Miles Davis Quintet, 1966, "Footprints."

I've rediscovered a Miles Davis album I had forgotten about: Miles Smiles. This is a live performance from one of the great combos in music.



The Tehilim (Psalms) were set to music, regal religious music. This to me feels like religious music: I like to think of them accompanying King David.

Pluralism Gone Wild

This article could have appeared in satirical pages of The Onion but it is an actual editorial that appeared this week. It is the idea of western pluralism taken to absurd extremes. If pluralism is so pluralistic that it can't place blame on axe-wielding murderers but rather on their victims, then it can't survive.

As a religious person, I would like to state for the record that I'm offended by the author's supposed defense of religion. Set aside for the moment that the term "religious people" lumps together radical terrorists and people like me. If religious people can't be expected to act rationally, to accept criticism and satire of their culture, without resorting to murderous violence, then they can't be defended.

The author's vision of the religious/secular divide would make it impossible for religion to exist in a pluralistic society. This is how pluralistic/liberal societies consume themselves and become anti-pluralistic: insisting that anti-pluralistic, anti-modern, anti-democratic violence is a legitimate political expression.

Tiger, Save Yourself: Abandon Buddhism!

That's what Brit Hume, in a moment of contemplative babble, tells the world. What can one even say? Nothing, so we'll let Brit speak for himself):

Airport Security, Ben Gurion Style

If you've flown from the US to Israel in the last 8 years, then you're aware of the stark contrast between American and Israeli airport security.

In America, the process of going through security takes way too long (too much time in lines), is ludicrous (pulling aside 90 year old women for explosives search) and cumbersome (mam, even though you're a seven months pregnant and traveling with a two year old, we need you to dig up containers of toothpaste and shampoo from your luggage and then to step aside so we can scan your socks). And as a reward for our lemming-like patience, we continue to find holes in the system either via TSA agents who are able to sneak explosives on planes or via actual threats that are fortunately derailed by courageous passengers.

In Israel, the process is quick, efficient, rational and there are no security breaches. This article explains why. I love the very Israeli-ness of the guy they interview.

Time Out for...Vic

Very sad news tonight in the NYTimes - the wonderful singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt has died. I've posted an amateur video (just still pics and lyrics) of his song "I'm Through" because there are very few high quality videos. Very spare guitar playing and a voice of immense power. Zichrono livracha.

Is a Political Rabbi a Bad Rabbi?

The Tikkun Olam Committee at Har HaShem recently sent out a letter advocating support for the health care bill and encouraging congregants to call their Congressional Representatives and Senators to encourage the bill's passage. It was signed "Rabbi Rose and the Tikkun Olam Committee."

I have received four responses from Congregants saying, essentially, "It was inappropriate for the Rabbi to advocate a particular political position and to encourage congregants to adopt that position." I'm not capturing the nuance of the letters, some of which were particularly thoughtful, but that is the gist.

First, I want to be clear that, as we said in the letter, you can certainly be a good Jew and oppose this legislation. The Jewish tradition does not require anyone to support this bill. Going further, there are some people who will find that Jewish values require them to oppose this legislation – that is a legitimate perspective. I want everyone to feel that the Jewish tradition and Har HaShem are foundational to their spiritual lives even if they disagree with others in the synagogue about any particular issue.

Second, though, I wanted to open this for discussion. Is it ever appropriate for a Rabbi in a synagogue to encourage passage of a particular piece of legislation? If so, under what circumstances?

Guidelines: keep responses brief and respectful. This is not a place for anger-filled polemics.

My argument is
All Jews, rabbis included, have obligation to make their voices heard when their tradition calls upon them to speak out.

Because we live in a diverse democracy, all people must use neutral language that is not particularistic in their political discussions. Though you may feel that “God wants me to support/oppose this or that legislation,” in a diverse society you must use rational, secular language to be persuasive.

There is no such thing as a moral issue that is not sullied by the particulars of legislation. The civil rights debate in the 50s and 60s were not just about “Inequality is immoral and must be stopped!” It was about legal language, constitutional powers, the balance between state and federal power. So, a Jew can’t seriously advocate/oppose a moral position on issue X without rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty with particulars.

Finally, Judaism is a religious tradition oriented toward not only the cultivation of individual spiritual life but also toward the creation of a just society. It requires us to look after the well-being of other people. One may say that conservative or liberal policies are the best way to achieve this, but my argument is that Judaism does not want us to disengage from political issues – which, I’m arguing, are actually moral issues.

What do you think?

Hamfisted

Too good. Thanks to Yehudis for passing it on:

Unsettling II

A while ago I posted here about Netanyahu and the settlement freeze. This New York Times article on Netanyahu suggests that he does, in fact, have an endgame. I don't see it.

War in Afghanistan Just?

I haven't had time to look at the President's speech. But The Times' coverage indicates that he referred to "just war" theory - or at least he argued that is a "just war."

There's information about just war theory here, which I think is not only a compelling way to approach the ethics of engaging in any particular war, but also an intellectually elegant argument in general.

You can find a paper I wrote about Jewish ethics and war here; part of the paper explains the just war theory. Judaism has no comparable theory.

Let me know your thoughts.

Time Out for Fun - The Story

OK, I was trying to find a way to tie this song into Torah in some way, because most of my "Time Out for Fun" vids have some Jewish tie in. I could try to connect the "I was made for you" line to some kind of existentialist theology, or the "blessing" line into some simpler religious notion.

The truth is that I just love Brandi Carlile's music. Her voice is a formidable weapon. I have just been knocked out by the force of it on a few occasions. But she is also a sly and skilled singer, dancing around the beat, dragging out sssylables. She's a bit of a Muhammad Ali of singers: brutally powerful but also capable of incredibly subtle movement. Enough blather; give it a listen and let me know your thoughts.

Strange Frequencies

Incredible story in the jpost about correlations between the frequencies of colors and the numerical value of the words representing them:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259831450363&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Rabbi Joshua Rose
http://onemoregrainofsand.blogspot.com
303.499.7077

UnSettling

This can't work. I just don't see how Israel can continue to conduct itself in this way and create any long term security for itself.

Netanyahu met with settlers in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and showed his true colors. To placate the United States, Israel has agreed to halt settlement. Netanyahu sends a signal of his contempt and his unseriousness about it though to the world during this meeting: "There are nine months and three weeks left," he tells them. In other words, we'll keep building as soon as possible; this whole thing is an illusion.

What is the play here? What is the long term goal of Netanyahu? He seems to be acting as though it is still 1989.

I can't read this without this week's Torah portion in mind. After years of bitterness and fear, Jacob and Esau see each other again. Jacob sends gifts in advance - yes, out of fear, as he seems to acknowledge - and they embrace, years of animosity dissolving in a moment.

No, I'm not arguing, as some simplistically do, that if Israel is just generous enough and warm-fuzzy enough, all will be good. That's foolish and disproven by history (Israel's history and diplomatic history in general). But what creates peace between Esau and Jacob is a genuine transformation and acts of self-sacrifice (not to mention inner transformation, at least on Jacob's part).

Diplomatic shell games are not going to do it.

Gratitude - Overstuffed Turkey edition

I’m opening this blog to those in my Musar class, The 613 Habits of Highly Effective People (well, it was open before, but I’m steering the class here now). The next class will focus on the middah (attribute) of gratitude. I’m encouraging people in the class (and feel free to jump in if you’re not in the class) to comment on the post, and comment on the comments. In other words, let’s use the blog as a place for discussion.

But first, something strange for Thanksgiving. In Hebrew, the word hodu means both “turkey” and “give thanks.” Think about that coincidence over the holiday…

Back to gratitude. In this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei, Jacob famously lays down to sleep and dreams of a ladder reaching up to heaven. God addresses him, assuring him that the Divine presence will be with Jacob as he journeys.

Then Jacob wakes up. Startled, he says “Ah, yes, God is in this place – and I did not know.” This is commonly understood in two ways. Some people (Ibn Ezra, Rashi) say that the actual spot where Jacob went to sleep was loaded with prophetic energy. But others (Genesis Rabbah) point out that “this place” could refer to the whole world.

If we go with this second interpretation, then we should constantly be saying, like Jacob, “God is in this place and I did not know.”

This fits nicely with the phrase that best conveys gratitude in Hebrew: hakarat ha-tov, literally “recognition of the good.” Simply put, that’s what gratitude is: recognizing what is good in our lives, without either denying or getting caught up in the myriad problems we know are there, too.

Gratitude is essential to a Jewish life. It’s in our prayers, blessings, rituals. We are supposed to wake up to it, sleep to it, eat to it. Having said that, it’s easier to talk about gratitude than to feel it. How is it going for you?

Happy Thansgiving, and please share your thoughts about gratitude. For those in the class, you may also decide this is a good place to comment on the theme’s of last class: humility and patience.

So, let me express my genuine gratitude for those of you who read this blog and share your thoughts with me on and off line. And a heartfelt thank you also to those who have already made the 613 Habits class so rich already.

- Rabbi Josh

Human Rights? Watch!

A very surprising article (Thanks, for sending it along, Bill) in the New York Times: The founder of Human Rights Watch criticizes that organization for their biased treatment of Israel.

They Don't Call it Um Shmum for Nothing

The abbreviation U.N. (United Nations), when translated into Hebrew, becomes "um" (pronounced 'oom'). Among Israelis, the U.N. is derisively referred to as "um shmum." Why? Things like the following, from Ha'aretz:

Goldstone slams UN council for ignoring Hamas war crimes

South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who headed the United Nations investigation over the Gaza offensive, criticized on Friday the Human Rights Council's decision to endorse the report his commission had compiled.

Goldstone told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps before the vote that the wording of the resolution was unfortunate because it included only censure of Israel. He voiced hope that the Human Rights Council would alter the wording of the draft.

Feh.

Words Create (Editors Destroy)

In this week of Bereishit, in which we read again and celebrate again, the story of creation, my thoughts drift to the power of language (a concise, if not completely accurate summary, of Bereishit would be "Words, Matter" If you think of a more concise summary, let me know).

Genesis postulates that there is a relationship between words and language. God says y'hi or (let there be light) va'yhi or (and there was light). I do believe that a words opens up a universe of meaning and this is how I understand the relationship between the importance of language in the creation story and the importance of language in the brit between the Jewish people and God. Whole realms of ethics, subjects for theological speculation, are opened up by Divine articulation. More than that, though, words of the tradition inspire actions and personal transformation. Language leads to creation.

This is why Judaism is constantly renewing and developing: the texts are always opening to people to take on new meanings and to discover in our own lives how language leads to creation.

Why all this? Because I'm working creating a new Kabbalat Shabbat service (starts this Friday at 6pm, come check it out) that is going to be truly great. It will draw on the psalms of a full Kabbalat Shabbat service. But I can't use the Reform prayerbook for the service. Why? Because the editors (some of them former teachers of mine for whom I have a great deal of respect) decided to remove large chunks of the readings in this (and many other) parts of the prayerbook.

To be fair, this most recent prayerbook has restored much language that had been removed from earlier Reform prayerbooks, so this has to be seen in context. But Reform Jews are robbed of the possibility of new creation, new meaning, by editors who have decided that it is not a priority that Reform Jews have access to certain traditional readings in their prayers.

The great contradiction of Reform Judaism: it is on the one hand a very democratic movement. It values individual Jewish experience and the search for meaning in the establishment of communal practice and in the articulation of individual obligation. But there is another anti-democratic strain, in which the intellectual elites of the Movement make editorial decisions to remove large swaths of prayers that have existed for centuries, essentially making spiritual choices for millions of Jews, choices that preclude the creation of universes of meaning.

This is why I encourage people to own our Reform siddur but to also own many other "traditional" prayerooks that have all the other good bits...

Time Out for Fun - Hava Nagila/Polish Heavy Metal

A band called Rootwater from Poland.

A Story Too Good To Be Trewish

It sounds like the story about Ahmadinejad having a Jewish past is, in fact, too good (bad?) to be true.

A Sukkah Born Every Minute

I actually don't have a post to go with that title, though we could think of one.

So, if you don't know, Sukkot it coming up Friday night. (At Har HaShem, by the way, there is a Sukkah-decorating program for families at 5:00 on Friday, followed by a family service and picnic. The "grown-up" services are at 7:00).

Anyway - a couple of thoughts. Each year the chagim (Jewish festivals) have a different meaning for me (and for all of us). This year, there's a sort of anti-materialism tradition that I'm digging.

There's a whole social critique connected to Sukkot that we can read as an anti-consumerist impluse, cutting against the insane bounty of our society. Even in a time of economic difficulty - and I'm sure some reading this have been personally affected by job-losses - Americans live with expectations that we should have cell phones, stereos, enough food to make us flabby, cars, computers, iPods, BlackBerry's huge TVs, etc.

Maimonides writes that Sukkkot reminds us of our time in the desert in order "to teach people to remember, during time of prosperity, harder times. We will then want to thank God repeatedly and to lead a modest and humble life."

Can hanging out in a booth with gourds hanging from the roof really bring us to that level of awareness and modesty? What do you think?

Polanski and Forgiveness

I've been so out of the loop with the chagim and all the work (I should say avodah) around them that I've been in a kind of news exile.

In any event, Roman Polanski was arrested on charges of child rape. He was charged over thirty years ago in California with raping a 13 year old. He fled the US and has been living in Europe since. US authorities arrested him as he was traveling to Switzerland (?) to receive an award. He is awaiting the judgment of a Swiss (?) court as to whether his extradition to the US for prosecution of this long ago event.

I came across the story in an article, in the NYT I believe, in which the French culture minister, Mitterand, said, essentially, that Polanski had erred many years ago, but his contributions as a great artist far outweighed this error. There is a United States that the French loved, he said, but that there was a United States that scared people, and that was the one showing its face with this arrest.

Many others have come to the defense of this beloved and brilliant filmmaker and have argued against his arrest.

This article from Salon is a powerful and plainly stated reminder of why such sentiments are so terribly wrong.

The defenders of Polanski who I have read online are not necessarily arguing that he didn't commit the crime. There seems to be a theme that he did commit the crime but that we should forget about it.

Our capacity to create, even to create great beauty, does not negate our horrible acts. Those acts have to be confronted, contemplated, understood and punished. Polanski has made no attempt at reconciliation - he fled the country. We have a tendency to be dazzled by beauty - but we can't become so dazzled that we no longer can see right and wrong.

There is also an impulse to be sympathetic because of Polanski's age and that fact that the alleged crime took place 32 years ago. But forgiveness doesn't just seep into one's skin over time. Polanksi is charged with raping a young girl - having sex with her against her will. How could this just melt away?

The religious dimension of repentance is that when we hurt someone - and clearly 'hurt' doesn't begin to describe the experience of this young girl (now a woman in her mid 40s) - we have to attempt to make amends. We seek forgiveness and reconciliation with the other person and we also engage in an internal process known as teshuvah - contemplation, reflection, commitment to change.

Both this external and internal process are hard to imagine in the case of a child rape - how could one seek forgiveness? The notion that he has the power to assuage her is offensive - what could be done? Halachah states that one who refuses to be assuaged takes on a burden of guilt but I do not know if the halachah is equipped to deal with such traumatic cases (I'm not saying this rhetorically; I really don't know). And second, it would seem likely that she would only be traumatized by any encounter with him and would want to, and should be entitled to, avoid it.

The legal (that is, US law) dimension is clearer. How can we not charge such a crime, even three decades late? If the law can not bring justice in the case of a 13 year old girl raped by a predator...then what good is the law?

Soulfood Presents: Metal from the Shtetl

August 23rd, Rock and Soul Cafe, time TBA but probably 7ish.

We'll be trying to figure out why so many Jews are Metal artists: most recently, the guys from Anvil, but of course the illustrious Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Dee Snider, C.C. DeVille, Slash, etc.

What is this about? Anger? Loudness?

We'll be enjoying frosty beverages and probably some food; join us.

Meditations on Jewish Psychedelia, Vol III

Does God revive the dead? Many Jews think that resurrection is a Christian belief, some strange holdover from the Jesus cult. Makes sense; I mean, they think that God died and was resurrected...so that must be their territory. Well, as in many other cases, the Christians stole our best chops.

Resurrection of the dead is a traditional Jewish belief. Three times a day we bless God for being m'chayeh ha-meitim, the one who gives life to the dead.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about hearing Sammy Davis Junior crooning again in the afterlife, so for me the prayer doesn't bring much on that level. I have been struggling recently with another kind of deadness - a lack of umph/enthusiasm. Part of it has to do with returning from the emotional high of Israel and part of it is just who I am.

When I meditate daily to M'chayeh ha-meitim, I'm thinking of the possibility of coming out of these periodic slumps, a struggle that in itself is life-affirming. So, I pray for a kind of life-giving, if not for bodily resurrection...

Loving Exile (On Main Street)

Listening a lot these days to the Stones' Exile on Main Street. What a glorious set of songs. The band at their apex, I think.

Also, what a great title - a Chasidic title, almost, in its use of galut (exile) not as a location in space but as a state of mind. It is possible to be in the "right place" and in a state of mind (or soul) that feels like exile.

I've been trying to listen to other albums, but this keeps demanding another play. Yesterday I put in a CD that I love so I could finally kick the Exile habit. It was Yonatan Razel's Sach Ha-Kol, an album of beautiful religious music in Hebrew. I couldn't listen to more than a song or two because it was so....one dimensional. Exile on Main St. is so textured and has a hundred years (at least) of musical tradition pouring out of it, each strain bouncing off the other.

Anyway, if you are a fan of the Stones and don't know the album, get a copy. The Yonatan Razel album is beautiful as well.

Uncle Sam and Iran

What do the United States and Iran have in common? They both use torture to get information from people they consider to be grave threats to their national security. And neither side calls it torture. Enhanced interrogation, intensive interrogation: let's call the whole thing off.

From an article in UTV news:

Fellow prisoners are reported to have heard screams of pain from Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister, and Ramezanzadeh, who was Khatami's government spokesman, during interrogations at [the prison] Evin's section 209, which is reserved for political prisoners and run by the hardline intelligence ministry.

Do those Americans who supported enhanced interrogation in this country support Iranian hardliners using those same techniques? I'd rather not be in their company.

shabbat shalom from Jerusalem

I'm soaking in the beautiful tranquility of Jerusalem before Shabbat. Quiet, the sound of just a few cars below, the streets empty.

Israel is a center of conflict to those in the diaspora. It has become even more clear to me that the simple political categories in America and Europe are insufficient to understand the conflict. On this trip we heard both from a peace activist who spoke convincingly about the real security risks facing Israel if the territories are given to the Palestinian people. This is also a woman with five children in the IDF. A few days later we heard from an analyst positioned firmly on the right who said that Israel must constantly seek peace and return to the negotiating table. He spoke personally about not wanting to send his seven year old son into an IDF facing war. Here political positions often reflect the complexity of real life instead of party or ideological allegiance.

But Israel is not just a place of conflict. It is a nation with a purpose, still, after all these years: to provide a home for the Jewish people. A diverse society to be sure, and an idealistic one - in spite of some of the unhinged charges of its more extreme critics. But a place for the Jewish people to be secure, to learn from its past and to discover its future. It is a place of great beauty and inspiration. We should all have a chance to be here at some point.

There are those among the Jews for whom Israel's future is guaranteed by its very existence - as if our status as Jews is a gaurantee of God's protection. In this week's parshah Korach challenges the priest's special status, affirming that all Israel is holy. We are taught though that Korach's mistake was in thinking that holiness is given rather than achieved. He and his followers felt it was there right to lead simply because of who they were - they did not need to become anything more to have power. Perhaps this is why there is the mysterious object-less verb, "Korach took," at the beginning of the Parshah. Maybe there is no missing word: it is just a statement of Korach's essence, an explanation of why he was punished. He simply wished to take, rather than give. He saw power as something to be given to him, an acquisition. Israel must continue to derive its security from is sense of purpose, its mission, its righteousness. This is not guranteed by the fact of its existence - but it is a promise of our past and a future that we must build.

Into the Wild

Half of the group left tonight. The rest are staying for the extension. We head into the Negev tomorrow, into the largest crater on Earth.

Today we walked the Old City. We were in the tomb of king David, housed inside a synagogue inside a building that was a monastery that is inside a building that was a mosque.

Being here has such a profound effect. It just feels like the right place to be - a country with a purpose, struggling constantly to survive and building all the time.

Jerusalem

We began the day at 4am to prepare for our sunrise ascent to Masada. Just after we got to the top the sun broke through brilliantly. How great to have to face north to pray the Amidah instead of east.

A tour de force...tour of Masada and its history from Yishai our guide.

This symbol of resistance was once occupied by the zealots, frowned upon by the rabbis for their commitment to violence and death over life. And this week we read Parshat Korach, about another band of rebels disliked by the authorities. But we learn that the fire pans on which these rebels offered the incense rejected by God were used after the rebellion as part of the mishkan. To dissent becomes part of the altar. So too with the Great Revolt that culminated in mass death at Masada, rejected by rabbinic authorities and crushed by Rome - it becomes a symbol of resistance and freedom as the temple is destroyed and Judaism is reborn without Temple service. A new altar is created.

Now we're in Jerusalem. We started with a kiddush and shechechiyanu at Mt. Scopus. Tomorrow is Yad Vashem. Everyone is infused with the city's spirit. More later

Israel Journey

An unbelievable jouney so far. Several people in the group have never before been to Israel - for them it is even more powerful. We've just spent Shabbat in Dor-Nachsholim, a beautiful beachside kibbutz. The Meditteranean is crystal blue. It was here that the blue dye techlet was made - and we are commanded to put a blue fringe on our tzitzit at the end of the parshah that we read on the Shabbat that we spent here (shalach l'cha). B'sheret.

Our guide for our Shabbat morning stroll on the archaeological mound on the coast was just the guy from reception at the hotel. He turns out to be a world famous marine archaeologist named Kurt Ravel, the guy who recovered the 2000 year old Galilee boat.

Too many beautiful moments to tell. Some highlights: meeting Avraham Dar, member of Palmach (the original military force that fought for independence) and later mossad agent. Rafting on the Jordan, meeting a peace activist with five sons who are IDF officers, celebrating Shabbat with our sister congregation in Zichron Yaakov, all of us united in literal and symbolic harmony as we sing in our ancient language.

Our pace has been crazy but we have seen so much. Masada and Jerusalem await.

What a magnificent country. So much investment in making this dream real. Ein zo aggadah, it is no legend, because of the work that people do every day.

L'hitraot

To Israel, With Love

So the Har Hashem Israel trip is about to leave. We are sitting on the runway at JFK antitpating ten hours of fly time. There are 14 of us and we are meeting 7 more in Tel Aviv. So far not much to report except the miracle of the ordinary: flight announcements and instructions in lashon hakodesh, the holy language. Not the elevated language of prayer of course but even more miraculous: who could have dreamed that we could have the privelege of hearing the banal in Hebrew? Well actually they willed it and it was no dream. More from Israel - we're buckling down for a nasia tovah.

Amos Elon, RIP, z"l

An article on the Israeli intellectual here.

Golem

An article here about an uptick in interest in the Golem. No, not the band Golem. No, not that Gollum) either. Information on the Maharal of Prague here.

Torture and Jewish Values, Continued

I'm increasingly disappointed by the Obama administration's stance on prosecution of the previous administration officials for the policies they developed and pursued permitting torture. Either they violated the law or they didn't if they didn't, then explain how that is the case. If they did violate the law then we have an obligation to the Constitution to take action. But we can't acknowledge that there was wrongdoing while claiming that we shouldn't pursue justice. Can we?

This idea that following the law amounts to vengeance and "looking back" is very troubling for those who like the idea that we are a nation of laws. See my earlier post, below, for a critique of the solidifying (congealing?) conventional wisdom in Washington on this.

For those who want a clearer picture of the practices we are talking about, the so called "torture memos" released earlier this month are here.

Torture: Justice or Vengeance?

David Broder has a piece in the Washington Post arguing that Obama is right to try to move the country away from prosecution of those who led the United States to torture terror suspects. I think Broder and Obama are both wrong.

Broder argues that
1) prosecution would amount to scapegoating.
2) the torture memos (that is, the torture policy) were the result of careful deliberate debate within the Bush white house.
3) prosecution would "set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into...vendettas."
4) The outcome of prosecution of Bush administration "underlings" would lead to the prosecution of President Bush, which is not desirable.

This is a silly argument, but it is one being made by a respected opinion-maker at one of the nation's leading papers. It's silliness must be exposed.

The "scapegoating" analogy is fascinating for its wrongness. The "scapegoat" comes from the Yom Kippur ritual described in Leviticus 16. The priest transfers the sins of Israel onto the goat, which is then set free to run into the wilderness carrying the sins of the community with it, thus purging Israel of its transgression.

The scapegoat, then, is burdened with the impurity of a sin that it did not (and, being a goat, could not) commit. There is no comparison between this and seeking to punish officials for the acts that they themselves committed.

Broder could have made a more interesting if imperfect analogy if he really wanted to hold onto the scapegoat idea: the desire to prosecute is misguided because it would punish a few individuals for the sins of the entire nation. This is not Broder's idea, but it might cause us to reflect on our own collective responsibility for allowing torture to result from our national anxiety and fear following 9/11.

The second argument, that we should not prosecute because even though the torture policies were wrong, they were the result of thoughtful deliberation, is also foolish. To begin with, it is increasingly clear the policies were not the result of thoughtful deliberation at all. Instead, John Yoo et al sought legal justifications for policies to which the administration was already committed. In addition, dissenting voices within the administration were shut out of the conversation so that their reservations about the legality of the torture policies would not stand in the way of the justifications being sought (See Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side for a fascinating and disturbing look at the internal debate in the administration.

But even if the administration policies were not post-facto justification for permitting torture, could we really say that their architects should be free from prosecution simply because there was a process of deliberation in place? No, we couldn't. Whether there was deliberation and debate is not the only issue. The other essential issue is whether that deliberation took place within a context of commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law.

Broder's third argument would prohibit prosecution of any wrongdoing at the government, or perhaps just the executive, level. A nation that subscribes to the rule of law can't possibly accept this notion, can it?

The response to the fourth argument is really a reiteration of the response to the third. If President Bush was responsible for acts that might be proven illegal, he should be prosecuted for them. We would be in serious trouble if the most powerful people in our nation were not subject to the law.

We learn in Pirkei Avot that we should be thankful for the government because without fear of it, human beings would eat one another alive. (By the way, now is a great time to read Pirkei Avot - its six chapters are traditionally studied between Passover and Shavuot). In our nation, the law is the government and if we fear to use the law to protect the values cherished by our people, we run the risk of social chaos - people eating one another alive.

Time Out for Fun - Kutiman's Aural-Video Tzimmes

Israeli musician Kutiman creates a song from ordinary musical clips on Youtube. The results are confusingly funky. A harmonious balagan, if there can be such a thing.

Purim - Lots....of Chaos

A brief word on Purim, which begins Monday night.

Purim means 'lots' and refers to the fact that the evil Haman cast lots to determine the date upon which the Jews would be destroyed (see Esther 3:7). Purim takes its name from chance, then - the pure chaos that seems to governs our lives. Haman's crass indifference to the fate of God's people is demonstrated by this contemptuous act of allowing chance to determine when the Jews will be destroyed.

But even beyond this literal casting of the lots, the story symbolizes the chaos of existence on a deeper level. People throughout the vast kingdom are to be destroyed because a single person (Mordechai) refused to bow to a king's Minister whose temper happened to get the best of him? How can any kind of Divine plan unfold in a world in which a single man, controlled by the vagaries of his own anger, has so much power?

God seems to be absent - there is no mention of God in the story at all. What is the relationship between the absence of God from the tale and the sense of chaos and chance that hang over the story?

Levi Yitzchak has a beautiful reflection on this. He takes this notion that God is absent and uses it to emphasize the importance of human agency. God's absence from the story reflects the fact that tzadikim, righteous ones, have the capacity to undo Divine decrees. God looks to the righteous and fulfills their will instead of God's own.

Rather than describing a righteous person as someone who does God's will, he redefines it as someone whose will God does. The righteous are sovereign. This explains why, in spite of God's absence and the corresponding presence of grim fate, the story comes out well: the righteous Mordechai and Esther bring salvation.

Our own sense sometimes that the world is without order, governed by chaos shouldn't lead us to despair. Instead it should lead us to a profound sense of hope, possibility and responsibility - that the chaos is only superficial and can be overcome by acts of courage and beauty.

Pretty heavy. So, don't forget to have mad fun on Purim, Monday night.

The Mitzvot of Purim (not a full list):
*Observe the fast of Esther - Monday morning until Monday evening (March 9th)
*Hear the Megillah read on Monday evening.
*Celebrate with a great meal.
*Send food to friends.
*Give gifts/money to those in need.
*Some say that one is obligated to get drunk enough on Purim that one no longer knows the difference between "blessed is Mordechai and Cursed is Haman." Others, however, say that the obligation is merely to drink more than one is accustomed to. Of course, one struggling with alcoholism is required to stay away from alcohol altogether on Purim.

Torture and Jewish Values

Alberto Gonzales does not think there will be prosecutions of Bush Administration officials for instituting torture in our pursuit of terrorists. I certainly hope he is wrong. I would love to see those involved - at whatever levels - strongly, er, embraced by the long arm of the law.

This does not come from my desire for the satisfaction of moral vengeance. It comes from my belief in the centrality of law to creating the possibility of moral order. There is a well-known statement in Pirkei Avot (in the Mishnah) that powerfully describes the importance of legal order:

Rabbi Chanina S'gan Ha-Kohanim said 'Pray for the well-being of the government - because without fear of it, a person would eat his neighbor alive.'

When the constitution is subverted, the kind of behavior we saw in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and which occurred in foreign interrogations at the bequest of the United States, prevails. Investigations and prosecutions where those are appropriate would shore up the rule of law, and thereby strengthen the government.

Yesterday I met with a Bar Mitzvah student. His Torah portion will be Mishpatim. Initially he was having trouble finding the text interesting - it was just a series of laws: what to do if your ox gores someone; what to do if your donkey falls in a pit created by someone else; the punishment for assault. We talked about what kind of society the Torah was trying to create, and what the society must have looked like without those laws. The moral and political order created by the Torah creates the kind of foundation upon which societies upholding human dignity are built.

So, hooray for prosecuctions. To quote our last president: "Bring 'em on!"

Rabbi Melissa Weintraub began as a rabbinical student to explore this issue and created some incredible resources on torture and the Jewish tradition. There are four documents which can be found here.

Roman Ruin

Pope Benedict is reinstating four men into the Church. One of them is a Holocaust denier (or, as he calls it, the "quote unquote Holocaust"). See the article here. Relevant dialogue from an interview on Swedish television is below.

The Church is gravely damaging relations with the Jewish world - taking giant steps back from the courageous path carved out during Vatican II.



Q: Bishop Williamson, are these your words: “There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies.”? Are these your words?

A: There you are quoting from Canada I believe, yes, of many years ago. I believe that the historical evidence — the historical evidence — is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolph Hitler.

Q: But you say that not one Jew was killed?

A: In gas chambers. I think…

Q: So there was no gas chambers?

A: I believe there were no gas chambers. Yes. As far as I have studied the evidence. I’m not going by emotion. I’m going by as far as I’ve understood the evidence. I think, for instance, people who are against what is widely believed today about the quote-unquote the Holocaust, I think that people, those people conclude — the revisionists as they’re called — I think the most serious conclude that between two and three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.

I Have a Dream

Dr. King starts at about 1:08

Time Out for Fun - Dylan, License to Kill (Live)

Electrifying performance of Dylan's magnificent "License to Kill," from the 1983 album Infidels. "He worships at an altar of a stagnant pool - and when he sees his reflection, he's fulfilled." Wow. Lyrics are below the video.

Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don't change soon, he will.
Oh, man has invented his doom,
First step was touching the moon.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, they take him and they teach him and they groom him for life
And they set him on a path where he's bound to get ill,
Then they bury him with stars,
Sell his body like they do used cars.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there facin' the hill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused,
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.
All he believes are his eyes
And his eyes, they just tell him lies.

But there's a woman on my block,
Sitting there in a cold chill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Ya may be a noisemaker, spirit maker,
Heartbreaker, backbreaker,
Leave no stone unturned.
May be an actor in a plot,
That might be all that you got
'Til your error you clearly learn.

Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he's fulfilled.
Oh, man is opposed to fair play,
He wants it all and he wants it his way.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Thoughts on Judaism and War

I have posted a paper that I wrote on the Jewish tradition and warfare here. It is an exploration of whether there is a basis for a "just war theory" in Judaism and of what Judaism has to say about the killing of civilians in war. Obviously, I'm posting it now because of what is happening in Gaza - as my first post on this showed I think it is a horrible and very complicated situation. For those just interested in the civilian issue, sections V and VI are most relevant.

Michael Walzer, a Princeton philosopher who has written a lot about the ethics of warfare, has over the last couple of years begun to explore Jewish values and war. Some of his work on the topic is here.

Creator of Lights

Beautiful images from the Hubble Telescope. "The Heaven's Declare the Glory of God." No doubt. See the Glory here. Thanks to Yehudis for passing this along.

Fear

Benny Morris explains what has Israel scared.

Israel - Darkness During the Festival of Light

I'm a mess of mixed emotions right now. I can barely bring myself to look at pictures of beautiful Palestinian children bandaged, bloody and bruised as a result of Israeli rocket attacks in Gaza - of corpses lined up next to one another surround by people wailing in grief. Try as we might, we cannot pretend that these are the faces of Hamas terrorists. Certainly Hamas terrorists and agents of their administrative apparatus have been killed - but these children? All of the bodies in the street? I believe in the moral value of proportionate response in war - that is, the notion that it is immoral to respond disproportionately to a threat. It is hard to see this as proportionate.

And yet...why has the world been silent as Hamas has violated the truce that was in place? As Hamas fired rockets into Israeli civilian areas? An organization with medieval social values and political objectives attacks the only democracy in the area and escapes without criticism. This is Israel's predicament, constantly: its sovereignty is violated innumerable times, it faces deadly attacks against its citizens, responding the way any other nation on earth would if it faced similar threats - yet the world is silent. Voices of outrage come only when Israel responds.

And yet, again...it is agony to see the Jewish state involved in this. This is not why Israel was created. Can Israel be more than a state? Must it be locked in realpolitique? Does it deserve the title Jewish state if it cannot transcend?

We must respond to this by turning to Jewish values and reflecting. Our responses cannot be conditioned by anxiety about whom we will disappoint or about whose side we fear to be on.

May it be Your will that the children of Abraham and the children of Ishmael one day live in peace.

Young Jews and the Shoah

What we've known anecdotaly for some time is now beginning to be common knowledge: young Jews do not see the Holocaust as an essential part of their Jewish identity. An article from Moment discussing new research is here.

For centuries Jewish identity and cohesion has been an alchemy of the Jewish past and present. Jews in 2008, young or old, don't get a lot of mileage from an emphasis on suffering in the recent past. It is not the experience of most Jews. The challenge is to give people meaning in a world in which all frameworks of meaning are under assault.

For many baby boomers the cornerstones of recent Jewish history are the Holocaust and the 1967 war. These are an important part of their experience and identity. The primary experience of younger Jews is one of domestic stability, tolerance, affluence, and an absence of anti-semitism. With regard to Israel, the formative memory is probably 1982 and Lebanon, which frames a view of Israel as the persecutor.

Basically, young people, like all people, are looking for authentic responses to questions about the meaning of Judaism. "Because our ancestors suffered" has never been enough.

Inauguration of Hate

Oy. Rick Warren, of Saddleback Church fame, will give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. What an awful gesture on Obama's part, a shameful gesture. Ugh. Blech. I assume it's an attempt to "unify" the nation, to reach out and demonstrate that he intends to be the leader of the entire nation, not just of Democrats. And, significantly, a calculating political move designed to bring more conservatives into the Democratic fold.

Isn't Obama more clever than this? This is the only way he could imagine to accomplish those goals for his party? There will now be a fundamentalist Christian who wants to use the literal word of the Bible as a blueprint for public policy inaugurating my President? I'm getting Jewish-y shivers.

Shame on Barack Obama. Oy.

Time Out for Fun - Music to be Plagued By

Someone just brought to my attention a brilliant concept (thanks, Steve). There is an album called "Plague Songs" with various artists performing their own musical interpretation of the Ten Plagues from the book of Exodus.

You can buy the CD here, the label's site is here, and the blurb about the CD follows....

Ten international singer-songwriters have each been commissioned by Artangel to write and record a song inspired by one of the ten biblical plagues. Following the original biblical order of the plagues, Plague Songs opens with Klashnekoff’s menacing Blood, via King Creosote’s bewitching Relate the Tale (Frogs) and Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt’s insistent Flies, Laurie Anderson’s mournful The Fifth Plague (Death of Livestock) and Imogen Heap’s mesmeric Glittering Cloud (Locusts) to Scott Walker’s evocation of Darkness and Rufus Wainwright’s tragic Katonah (Death of The Firstborn).

Who's Praying Who?

Beautiful Weirdness from the Talmud.

In the Talmud (Brachot 7A if you care) there is a "whoah, heavy" moment (Dude, have you watched the Wizard of Oz while listening to Dark Side of the Moon?) that just blew me away when I read it.

Following an assertion that God prays, the question immediately comes up, "Well, what does God pray?"

Rav Zutra bar Tovia said in the name of Rav, [God prays] “May it be My will that My mercy will conquer My anger, and that My mercy will overcome My [other] attributes. And may I deal with My children according to the attribute of mercy and deal with them more generously than the law requires.”

Huh? To whom - or is it, to Whom - is God praying? "May it be My will"? Who is controlling God's will? If it is merely God focusing God's own intention so that God remembers to be merciful, does this teach us something about our own prayers? Are they simply words intended for the one who prays? One way to deal with this is to say that God is actually powerless. Perhaps the prayer reflects Divine acknowledgment that the universe moves along and God can only say "May it be...."

And what are we to think, as we pray? Keep in mind that many of our blessings begin with this same formulation (May it be Your Will....) If we mimic God, who is praying, and if clearly God can have no object to whom Divine prayers are directed, then are we praying to no effect?

Things get stranger. This passage is followed immediately by a story:

Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha said, “Once I entered into the inner sanctuary [the Holy of Holies] to make an incense offering. I saw Achtari’eil Yah Adonai Tzva’ot, who was sitting on a high and elevated throne. He said to me, ‘Yishmael, My son, bless Me.’ I said to Him, ‘May it be Your will that Your mercy will conquer Your anger, and that Your mercy will overcome Your [other] attributes. And may You deal with Your children according to the attribute of mercy and deal with them more generously than the law requires.’” He bowed to me.

Dude. Pass the Fritos. It could be that the previous prayer - the one that God is understood to pray - comes from this. That is, this story about Yishmael may be placed here as an explanation of the previous paragraph. So, the Talmud is saying, "How do we know that God prays that prayer? Well, Yishmael once blessed God with it, and God recognized the legitimacy of the prayer by bowing [a commentator imagines God saying "Amen"].

But it could work in the other direction [hat tip to Channah Rose for this]: it could be that God's prayer is proof that when Yishmael encountered God, the prayer Yishmael uttered was put in his head by God. So, Yishmael had the experience of praying by his own volition but was actually a vessel for words planted in him by God.

This also suggests a way to understand the meaning of prayer in our experience. Words that feel either like spontaneous outpourings of the heart, or words that come to us prescribed by the tradition, are actually words "returning to their source." Seen in this light, prayer becomes a meditation, a deep and profound meditation, with subject and object coming together; matter and maker becoming one through meditative language itself.