Category Archives: Israel

Irrational Theological Yoga (with Maimonides)

It’s that time of year, folks. The time when Jews get really sad and stop eating. The time when we cry about our past that we can’t seem to let go of and spend all day avoiding each other’s eyes.

No, it’s not the family reunion.

We’re coming up on Tisha b’Av, my favourite of the religious practices avoided by Reform Judaism. I say avoided because we haven’t really expunged it from the realm of “normative” Reform Judaism (a concept that I acknowledge is itself highly specious), we’ve just pushed it to the fringes of what we do. I imagine that part of the reason for it’s relegation to the land of tznius and shatnes is that Tisha b’Av always takes place during the summer, when attendance at shul is down and most of the dedicated member base aren’t around. I would be curious to see what a Reform observance of Tisha b’Av would look like if it were in September, right after Simchat Torah.

In any case, it seems that many Reform Jews have a fragile relationship with Tisha b’Av. Most Reform Jews don’t do anything at all to acknowledge the day. At many of our camps, there is some sort of ceremony that is largely tied to the creation of Israel and it’s successes in light of our history of persecution. And then there are those Reform Jews that try and engage with the central meaning of the day – the destruction of the Temples. I would be willing to wager that out of those who observe some form of rememberance – either through fasting, prayer, study, or the such – none actually wish to see the beit hamkidash restored. For those Reform Jews that do observe Tisha b’Av, the day is about something else. So what is it about?

The URJ’s Jewish Holidays website has this to say:

“Reform Judaism has never assigned a central religious role to the ancient Temple. Therefore, mourning the destruction of the Temple in such an elaborate fashion did not seem meaningful. More recently, in Reform Judaism Tishah B’Av has been transformed into a day to remember many Jewish tragedies that have occurred throughout history.”

Ok, fine. Fair enough. We’ve got Rememberance Day in Canada, and there’s Memorial Day in the USA. But collective historical memory is nothing new to Jews. It’s no Reform innovation to say that we need to recall our past tragedies. So what’s going on?

Rabbi Lewis M. Barth, professor emeritus of midrash and related literature at Hebrew Union College, posits a modern Reform approach to the day in this week’s Reform Voices of Torah:

“Tishah B’Av could be a day that we spend in self-reflection and self-examination regarding (1) the legal, economic, social, moral, and religious issues of our own time, (2) the ways our congregations and communities might measure ourselves and society against our commitments to social justice, and (3) the obligations we have to take responsibility for helping to make this a better world.”

Ok, that’s good, too. Great, actually – a perfect model of Reform Jewish practice. But it’s also no Reform innovation to suggest that we need to think about how to better our socity. Ever heard of tikkun olam? Do we need Tisha b’Av to highlite the importance of tikkun olam in Reform Judaism?

This past week, Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman responded to Rabbi Barth’s drash, with the following question:

“How far should we be willing to go in re-adopting what so many of us believe to be antiquated and outmoded observances, beliefs, and rituals? How far ought we be willing to stretch ourselves ideologically when it comes to these concepts which our Reform fore-bearers jettisoned?

Things in Jewish blog-land are never dull. I’ll respond to the idea of “stretch[ing] ourselves ideologically” in a moment. First, here’s an excerpt from David A.M. Wilensky‘s response to Rabbi Shwartzman’s response:

“Does mourning the loss of the immense and rich culture of European Jewry that existed before the Shoah mean that we desire to return to a ghettoized, isolationist shtetl lifestyle? Obviously that’s not what is meant when we mourn the loss of that culture. We accept that a Jewish way of life, full of culture, came to an end and we mourn its loss.”

I’m not sure how much unpacking David’s reponse needs – it’s pretty straightforward. I recommend reading the rest of what he has to say. I happen to agree (mostly) with him on this one. For Reform Jews, Tisha b’Av is not about tying ourselves down to an Orthodox conception of the holiday, nor is it about re-establishing a caste system. In that light, and going back to Rabbi Shwartzman’s posting, I do think that the holiday can be about stretching ourselves ideologically. I also happen to think that that’s what all of Reform theology and practice should be about – stretching ourselves.

I (and I don’t believe I’m alone on this one) have always believed that Reform Judaism is verbular – it is a dynamic movement. Indeed, we are a movement. We’re unsatisfied with stagnant practices and beliefs solely for the sake of maintaining the status quo. Why then should we be afraid of stretching ourselves on Tisha b’Av? How about some theological yoga? Hell, even Maimonides knows that observances are useless unless they direct us towards the greater good:

“There are days when all Israel fasts because of the troubles that happened to them, in order to awaken the hearts and open the pathways of repentance… so that in the memory of these matters we will return to doing the good.”

~ Mishneh Torah, (Ta’anit 5:1)

Even some members of the Modern Orthodox world seem to be acknowledging that Tisha b’Av doesn’t have to be about a restoration of any sort, but is more about fighting against political and societal corruption:

…But by 70 CE the whole [Temple] thing was probably looking a bit dated. How long could the [Beit Hamikdash] have gone on for anyway? Certainly by the middle ages the notion of having a temple and sacrificing animals would have been totally ridiculous, and even by Chazal‘s time I think it was just not feasible… By the end, the Temple had become a totally corrupt institution. (Actually even near the beginning). And the Priests were a political power base which Chazal didn’t care for too much.”

As for me, I think within Reform Judaism, the “raging” debate over observance of Tisha b’Av is part of the greater debate on the inclusion of rational vs. irrational practices. As I’ve noted earlier, I think Judaism (and religion, really) isn’t an inherently rational institution, so to try and square everything out is like trying to push a square block through a triangle hole. At some point, you’re going to distort the square a little too much. Is it rational to observe Tisha b’Av when we have no desire to see the Beit Hamkidash restored? Nope. In no way. Why mourn something you don’t want back. The reason we mourn things is because we lament their loss, and I think it’s completely irrational to mourn the destruction of the Temple. But I also think that’s ok.

I think we should be irrational. I think we try way to hard too rationalize everything, and we are worse off for that. Let Tisha b’Av be a time when we embrace the irrationality that exists within our traditions and stretch ourselves a little. When we mourn the destruction of the Temples, what is hidden behind the irrationality of that mourning? It is the opportunity to think about political corruption and the ways in which we can better society, not for the inherent worth of doing so, but for the sake of embracing a hugely significant part of our history.

Antioxidant Writing

CBC Radio had a programme on this morning which was discussing how the Canadian Chinese media is covering the current crisis in Tibet. While the press here obviously enjoys much more autonomy than it does in China (“Hello? Can anyone in China see this website?”), apparently Tibetan protesters are being referred to as “rioters,” and the violent Chinese crackdown on these “rioters” is being referred to as the “restoring of order.”

Ok. So I’m not on the ground in Tibet and I don’t have the ability to judge this situation with 100% impartiality and objectivity, but it seems to me as though the cloak of Chinese state censorship has extended to the far reaches of their Diaspora. While I obviously think that this is probably not the best way that the Chinese Canadian media should enjoy their freedom of press, I’m not educated enough on the intricacies of the whole affair to offer any conclusive argument. My opinion is that Chinese Canadians who enjoy rights ensured by Canada should make use of them and speak up. And maybe they are… a cursory Google search for “Chinese Canadian criticism of China” did yield some results, although none from any Chinese Canadian media outlets. A good blog commentary on the issue can be found here.

Of course, one thing led to another, and I started personalizing the issue. I live in a Diaspora, too. Does not living in our ancestral homeland affect the way the Jewish media writes about Israel? Apparently it does…

Larry Cohler-Esses, who has been the editor of the Jewish Student Press Service, has worked for The Washington Jewish Week, The Jewish Week (New York), and has been dispatched worldwide (to Syria and Yemen, no less) had this to say in a 2004 interview on the Jewish press:

“People don’t read Jewish newspapers for the reason they read regular newspapers. People read regular newspapers to get information, whether they agree with the paper or not. People read Jewish newspaper to affirm their sense of identity. Often that means you are writing articles that people don’t particularly want to know about.

“If you want to know to know about Israel, you can get most of your information from The New York Times and the Washington Post. You read the Jewish newspapers to get your sense of Israel’s rightness and correctness in the world affirmed.”

Nu?

Are we employing self-censorship here in Canada and the US? What happened to “Two Jews, Three Views”? I’ve often complained that the Canadian Jewish News is not exactly the most newsworthy paper in the country. To be sure, there’s more criticism in the Israeli media of politics, military actions, and internal social affairs, not to mention culture, sports and the regular skewering of fellow Jews. You get the idea. Even the Jerusalem Post has a more nuanced collection of articles than the New York Jewish Week, or the Canadian Jewish News – the largest Canadian Jewish weekly. A quick look through the “Israel,” “News,” and “Politics,” sections of these sites provides more than enough evidence. For a people who have been at the forefront of championing the mainstream, secular media, we’re doing a pretty shoddy job of ensuring journalistic integrity in our own newspapers.

Like with Tibet, I don’t purport to offer any conclusive solution. But I do believe that perhaps salvation lies in people continuing to read what independent Jewish journalists have to say, i.e. read (and write) blogs. The variety of opinion is healthy for the mind. We’re like the dark fruits and vegetables in the produce section. Full of antioxidants.

***

In other news (extremely relevant to me today), apparently Shakespeare’s plays were not written by Shakespeare, nor were they written by another man named Shakespeare. One woman claims to have evidence that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a Jewish woman.

Worth repeating

Not long after getting out of the army, a friend and I drove down to Eilat to relax for a couple of days. We were sitting in our hotel room after an amazing day of hiking and snorkeling, and there was the news. A suicide bombing. Twenty people were murdered, dozens more injured. It was the “Childrens’ Attack.” I stared helplessly at the TV screen, I prayed for the injured, and I prayed to see an image of the new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, distraught, upset, denouncing the violence. As the night rolled on, more people died, the army made plans, but Abu Mazen never appeared. My friend and I were shooken up, we couldn’t stay and swim any longer. We packed our bags and headed home.

The next morning, on the drive back, we stopped by an army base where my old unit was stationed. There was a good friend of mine, now an officer. Roi was doing some work on a tank, and he was alone. I climbed up with him, and we sat down to talk. There, on that hulk of steel we cried. We were sorry for ourselves, we were sorry for our country, we were sorry for the victims, we were sorry for the Palestinians, and we were sorry for the world. Niether of us had ever wanted to fight, but we did. We did it because we needed to, because there was a war, because we had a responsibility to keep our friends and our families safe. But, every day, we prayed for peace. We prayed for an end. Every day that we fought in the territories, every day that we caused Palestinian suffering, we understood just how much we shared with them, and how hurtful it was for everyone for this all to go on. The past few weeks had been quiet. Roi’s company was able to leave the front. We thought it was ending, that perhaps things would change, but the night before had shattered everything once again. So, we sat, stared at the sun, and we cried. We were tired.

That was nearly five years ago. Since then, wow, things have changed, right? Arafat died, the Red Sox won the World Series, the disengagement hapenned, I went to school, Arik had a stroke, Facebook, the Lebanon war – and we’re still fighting the Palestinians, and terrorism keeps on going. You know what? I am tired.

I am tired of fighting, I am tired of death. Yes, I will go on. I will continue to support Israel, I will continue to fight for peace. I will continue to draw attention to the genuine suffering of the Palestinian people, and I will continue to serve in the reserves, and God forbid – in another war. But, I am tired of all of this i am tired of trying to fight my way through this horrible moral thicket, and I am tired that for every thought of doubt I have, someone is questioning my character. Blaming me for the holocaust, blaming me for the death of Palestinians, blaming me for the death of Jewish citizens, and blaming me for ignoring Torah. All of this is complicated, it is exhausting. My thoughts have grown so jumbled and confused, that the beginnings and ends of conversations and arguments are hidden beneath so many layers of rhetoric.

I am lost, I am confused, and I am tired.
by Josh Frankel

Worth Repeating: To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist

To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist:
By Bradley Burston

Spare us the explanations.

Spare us the learned, sociology-drenched justifications.

Spare us the reasons why you “get” Palestinians when they gun Jews down in cold blood.

Spare us the chapter and verse on how the plight of the Palestinians is at the root of Islamic terrorism the world over, and if the Palestinians were to receive full justice, Islamic terrorism would pass from the world.

Spare us.

You may well believe, with the blind faith of the hopeful and the fear-stricken, that when these people are through with the Jews, they won’t come for you.

Think again.

Spare us the post-modernism and the radical chic and the guff.

Open your eyes.

When a gunman walks into a Jewish religious seminary at the main entrance to that part of Jerusalem which has been Jewish since 1948, and which was stolen from no one, pay attention.

When he opens fire on religious students hunched over books in a library, firing and firing until blood soaks holy book bindings and open pages of Talmud and the whole of the floor, pay close attention to the reactions of the self-styled people of faith who run Hamas.

Spare us the conclusion that the only reason Hamas kills Jews, and that its underlying motive for encouraging others to do the same, is to force Israel to agree to a cease-fire.

Spare us the “Israel’s policies are responsible for the bloodshed” and “the seminary is, after all, an ideological bastion and symbol of the religious right” and all the other scholarly, arrogant, condescending and amoral ways of saying “they had it coming to them.”

Spare us the understanding for the motivations of the mass murderer who kills with God on his lips. Spare us the understanding of the words of the Hamas official who says that after all the Israeli killings of Palestinians, the Jerusalem killings are “our only joy.”

Spare us the sight of the thanksgiving prayers for the great victory, prayers that began in Gaza City mosques just after the slaughter of the Jews. Spare us the sight of the sweets being handed out by little children to motorists in passing cars in the Strip, sweets to celebrate the young Jews dead on the floor, the young Jews dead at their desks, the Jews killed for the crime of being Jews in that place of study and worship.

Spare us the righteousness of those who condemned Baruch Goldstein for entering a holy place with an assault rifle and murdering Palestinians, but who can understand why a Palestinian might do the very same thing,

Open your eyes.

Last week, when Israeli forces drove into Gaza, and some 120 Palestinians were killed, many of them were gunmen, but with children making up another sixth of the total, one grieving father spoke with quiet eloquence, saying “Other places in the world, when this happens, there is a great outcry. When this happens here, the world is silent. No one cares.”

He’s right. The world has grown content to let Palestinians die. The reason is not simple callousness. And it is not, as Hamas proclaims to its followers in Gaza, that the Jews control the world media and world finance, and thus Western government as well.

The reason is terrorism.

The world has grown weary of the Islamist’s creed, that only the armed struggle can resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the only proper resolution is the end of Israel.

Even the Israeli left, which for decades championed the Palestinian with courage and determination, has, in large part, had it with the Palestinians. The reason is terrorism. The reason is murder. The reason is that the rulers of Gaza are people who see an intrinsic value in the killing of Jews for the sake of increasing the number of dead Jews in the world.

The rulers of Gaza cannot bring themselves to accept the concept of sharing the Holy Land with the Jews.

The best that the rulers of Gaza can do, is to bring an end to hope among their own people and ours as well.

They believe that the Jewish state is temporary, and that they Jews will soon abandon it to Islamic rule.

After all this time, you’d think they’d know the Jews a little better.

Obama for PM

We, the people of Israel, no less than the people of Palestine, are hostages of our history and of our present leadership. Our extremists – perhaps the only inspirational speakers we have – bludgeon us into feeling that we must resurrect a glorious past which is not only impossible to recreate, but which blocks us from moving on into a livable future.

We could use a good man like Barack Obama. We need a man who has an awareness of his own limitations, and a sense of the boundless promise of the nation and its people. We need to be uplifted. We need to heal. We need to be able to triumph over our own habits and preconceptions, our grief and our grievances, our prejudices and our blood grudges.

We need someone who can see the horizon we have long ago stopped seeking. We need to resurrect the most battered of our values, the belief in the power of reconciliation and cooperation, the faith in the sheer existence of possibility.
~ Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz

Commentary coming soon

A tale of one city

The following are quotes that have appeared on posters and signs of protest regarding this week’s Peace Summit in Annapolis. All of the slogans belong to either Arab or Jewish protesters. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which belong to whom.

Not one inch.

You have no right.

Anyone who gives away the property of our people is a dangerous traitor.

It belongs to us, all of it.

Jerusalem is ours in its entirety.

The land is ours alone, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.

Any act is just in defense of our right to our land.

Our case, our cause is entirely, objectively just. Theirs is a flat lie.

A no to compromise is a yes to self-defense.

Peace is an illusion.

Don’t even think about it.

If you need help parsing this out, it’s for good reason. I suggest reading this for a little assistance. Then again, you might not what like what you read. But that’s the whole point of this protesting thing, isn’t it? People who don’t like what other people are doing.

Is Israel the proud new owner of a hamster?

Always fun to throw a shout out to fellow bloggers ranting (or passionately discussing…) about Jewish life way out here in the Diaspora. The lovely Brooklyner (is that what you call someone from Brooklyn?) has picked up on the moral delicacies of what to do with the current state of affairs in Gaza.

There’s something odd about the notion of Israel continuing to provide water to Gaza, yet cutting off oil as a power source. It seems a little two faced. Shouldn’t the response be a little more balanced? I’m always caught at a loss to find the balance between Israel’s right and responsibility to defend itself, it’s responsibility to care for those Palestinians who live in its midst under its direct or indirect control (the ger toshav who the Torah explicitly instructs us to respect and treat as one of our own), and it’s responsibility to find some way to get the Palestinians to care for their own.

Look, there’s no concrete answer right now. I don’t pretend to have one, and I don’t imagine anyone else does right now.

And I’m not going to go on and on and on and on about how the situation sucks and it’s so and so’s fault and blah blah blah.

That’s been done. Ad nauseum. By me, and others. But here’s what I have to share…

There was a comment posted in response to a Ha’aretz article some years ago. I don’t recall who posted it, or where they were from. But I will never forget the undeniable wisdom that this anonymous being shared. I hold it dear to me and I continually find that it helps inform my entire perspective of the matzav.

It went something like this:

The Torah says that Abraham and Sarah’s decedents will inherit the land, but it odes not tell us what to do with it. Wise beneficiaries will use an inheritance wisely… the book of Deuteronomy says “Lo bashamayim hi” – it is not in the heavens that we derive authority. God gave authority and wisdom and patience to us. Now let us use it.”

This beautiful midrash has much to teach us. Much more than my pedantic musings will allow. So in short here’s my question in response to the Gaza brouhaha – Is it a show of divinely bestowed authority and wisdom and patience to dangle canisters of oil over the heads of ordinary Gazans, while graciously letting them drink from our hands?

Contrary to the rhetoric of the anti-Israel crowd, the Gazans don’t live in some sort of hamster cage. Or at least that’s what we insist on. I think. Right?

Some thoughts for Shabbas…

 

It is not a cloudless day. The divine arc that bends toward a truly just and whole society has not yet stretched fully across my country’s sky like a rainbow of peace. It is not finished, it does not always live up to its promise, it is not perfect – but it is new. A brand new thing, like a dream of God, has come about to replace the old story of mutual hatred and oppression.