Late September

Dear Friends,

Well, it doesn’t get much later in September than September 30th, which is when I’m writing this letter to you.  It’s the first day of Sukkot… one of the three Pilgrimage Festivals listed in Torah.  Actually, one of the Hebrew names for this holiday is He Hag, or The Festival… giving it primary status among all of our many holidays.  Yet we have barely caught our collective breath from the High Holy Days, and unfortunately, Sukkot often gets short shrift.  This festival, when the late summer crops are in and the people are instructed to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to give thanks for earth’s bounty, is a marvelous one.  The sukkah, the temporary structure in which people sleep and eat even today, is a wonderful reminder of the fragility of humankind’s building compared to nature’s great edifices.

Part of our lack of real buy in to the holiday today, I think, is that we’ve moved too far away from the agrarian culture, so the importance of a harvest festival has diminished.  Our ties to the land, to the seasons, to weather and its complexities have all been made less important because of our ability to build safe living spaces and control our food production.

Yet we still find incredible fascination with natural disasters… with hurricanes devastating Florida, with tornados and earthquakes and Mount St. Helen’s about to erupt once again.  We watch the weather channel.  We buy videos of “Earth’s Greatest Natural Disasters”.  We are both fascinated and horrified by the power of nature.  What we’ve lost, I think, is our gratitude for the simple rhythm of nature that makes things work.  We take for granted the rising of the sun, the rain in its season and the crops that grow.  We take for granted the fish in the ocean and the people who catch them.  We take for granted all of nature’s bounty and don’t stop and go off to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year to say thanks. (There are three pilgrimage festivals – Pesach and Shavuot are the other two for those of you who might be wondering.)

My husband and I do a lot of road trips to places of great natural beauty.  I say a lot of shehecheyanus to give thanks for those places and for the opportunity to visit them.  I am frequently overwhelmed by the wonders of nature.  I find incredible spiritual sustenance in places like Yosemite and Sedona and Arches and Capital Reef and Hacklebarney State Park (bet I got you there) and sitting on my aunt and uncle’s porch at Lake Hopatcong.  Where I don’t give thanks, and probably should, is in the produce section of my grocery store.

I don’t want you to think that every time I run in to the grocery store to pick up kitty litter or a quart of milk I’m going to find myself saying a blessing over the romaine.  I just think it’s important for us to remember it’s truly amazing we’ve evolved as far as we have, so I can run in to the store and there is this amazing bounty for me to pick from.  I think that every once in a while we should be overwhelmed by the normality of our lives as well as by the extraordinary.  I think it is important for us to be grateful for the day to day.

I also think that it is incredibly important for us to remember, as we are feeling this gratitude, that there are so many people, in our own hometowns, who are not able to run into grocery stores and pick up a quart of milk.  Perhaps part of our Sukkot celebration (you’ve got a week – but you’re allowed to do this other times too) might include a trip to our local Food Bank, or a contribution to Mazon or some other hunger project.  It certainly is appropriate as a way to celebrate a harvest festival.  Let’s harvest some of our own good luck and spread it around…

I’m going to close with my favorite quote from the Pirke Avot… the Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (well, it really is the Wisdom of the Fathers but the translation is Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s and he uses Sages, so I’ll use it too cause I like it better…) For those of you not familiar with the source, this is part of the Talmud, the commentary on the laws of Torah written by those Rabbis I’m always talking about.

Rabbi Tarfon would say:

You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.
Do justly now.  Love mercy now.  Walk humbly now.
If you attend to Reality, you will receive great reward; for effort itself is good fortune.
Reality can be trusted to pay you the value of your work; every deed has a consequence.
And know this – the payment of the righteous is tranquility:  knowing that “this, too, shall pass.”

Pirke Avot II: 20

Chag Sameach (a joyous festival),
Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara

Early September

Dear Friends,

As promised, this letter will be about Tefilah – or prayer, in the English translation of the word. Sometimes, however, the translation seems a little narrower than the Hebrew word as it stands alone. I will confess (as I’m sure I have in the past) that my knowledge of Hebrew is limited to what we call “Prayerbook Hebrew.” I know the language of the synagogue. I couldn’t last for 15 minutes on the streets of Jerusalem without a guide. Because of that, many of the words of the prayerbook have become mantra-like to me… they carry an enhanced weight because I only use them for ritual and/or religious purposes. So when I say Tefilah, it carries with it an imagery of my own prayer experience, the feel of my tallit, the sound of my heart beat during the Amidah, the faces of children praying… the word is full of images that the English word prayer doesn’t carry for me. In some ways, that may be my only legitimate argument for retaining Hebrew as our language of prayer… but I digress…

Prayer is one of the most difficult parts of being Jewish, or maybe even religious. It doesn’t help that it was developed as a substitute for ritual sacrifice. When I first learned that I immediately wanted to forget it. All I could think about were dead doves and fires burning and priests chanting “secret stuff” and now my prayers were supposed to substitute for that? Not a chance… Then, of course, I let my intellect step in to the internal debate and realized that the evolution was truly brilliant… we had removed the priests (and the dead birds) from the equation and we were now free to have our conversation with the Other on our own terms and in our own way. Of course the Rabbis (there they are again…) still had lots of rules and requirements for prayer – but we were on the straight-line course that would lead to the kinds of prayers that I can pray wholeheartedly today.

So where’s the difficulty? Well, the biggest one is obviously the concept of prayer as conversation. If you read through Psalms, or any of the prayers in our ancient texts, they are clearly directed outward to God. God is supposed to be listening and doing something in response to our prayers. There is supposed to be an active relationship going on. God is supposed to care and do something and if there is no response there is a failure on the part of the person doing the praying or on the people Israel who have become so corrupt no prayers can save them. This is not a very comfortable template for prayer, especially as we move through our Elul work leading up to the Holy Days when we will spend hours engaged in this relationship.

We need to fast forward to more modern times as Judaism and humanity has evolved. We need to think about what a God conversation is really about. We need to understand why we pray – what the purpose of prayer is for us and what we expect the outcome of prayer to be. The old joke, “God always answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no…” is poignant, but also a little reality check on life in modern times. How could it be possible for us to turn our lives over to God’s responsiveness to our prayers when we know the greatest gift we’ve received as human beings is free will? In the High Holy Day service on Yom Kippur the Torah reading tells us flat out that we are given free will. Our Elul prayers and meditations have got to be about our own “God-given” ability to return, to do justice and to be godly. We aren’t giving things up to God; we are focusing our thoughts in a godly direction. The question for us is: How can we, as twenty-first century thinkers, direct our prayers in a way that doesn’t make us feel hypocritical?

Modern times teach us that God’s presence is as much within as without. God, or the God idea, or the Power that Makes for Salvation, or whatever the grace is that brings us to love one another, needs to be acknowledged by us and needs to be nurtured by us. It doesn’t matter what we call it. In our prayer book it is called Adonai, but we also are given dozens of other names for it… because the writers of our prayerbook knew that we couldn’t capture the imagery with just one name. Even in Torah there are innumerable names for God and in translations there are dozens more… so why should we feel constrained at all when it is time to pray?

As Elul continues and we approach Rosh Hashanah it is so important that we remember that the prayers that we are praying must come from our hearts and we need to find a sincere way to have that “conversation.” Who or What we are praying to perhaps should be part of our Elul process this year. For all of you who struggle with the idea of prayer, think about that this year… think about changing your focus from having trouble praying to finding out in what direction you want to aim your thoughts and feelings. Perhaps your route is circular and your prayers will come back into your soul for internal reflection. Perhaps your route reaches out to loved ones far away. Perhaps your route embraces the community or rests on a mountaintop or the crash of the ocean or the flight of a butterfly… Perhaps your route is just outward to the unknown in the hope that something is there… and maybe this year you can find a route that works for you… and your prayers will fly from your heart and soul and you will feel refreshed and renewed and made whole once again…

There’s a reading that I often put up outside my office to remind us that it is the kavanah, the intention of our heart and soul, which allows us to pray. It is also the belief that we can have the conversation at all, whether we are Tevye the milkman shouting our rage at God or the small child whispering in his or her pillow at night or the teenager catching the perfect wave and knowing that the word “awesome” barely covers the feeling… The words come up because they cannot be contained… That is prayer…
Here is a Chasidic reminder that the form is far less important then we perhaps were led to believe:

When the great Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov saw the misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.

Later when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say:

“Master of the Universe, listen!
I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.”

And again, the miracle would be accomplished.

Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say:

“I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.”

It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.

Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, with his head in his hands, he spoke to God:

“I am unable to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.”

And it was sufficient. And sometimes our prayers are answered… perhaps not the way we expect… but when a conversation begins amazing things can take place…

May your New Year bring you health, peace of mind and spirit and peace throughout the world.

A Good Year for You and Those You Love,

Barbara

Late August (the 8th day of Elul)

Dear Friends,

As I think I shared with you last year, until I realized that the Jewish tradition really gave us the entire month of Elul, as well as our Ten Days of Atonement (better known as the High Holy Days) to get our personal acts together, it always seemed an impossible task. How, in ten short days, could I really take a look at my past year, figure out where I had deviated from the path I had set out for myself, and retrace my steps and fix it all? Once I knew I had forty days, a certain calm set in. I felt that perhaps I had a shot at it. Perhaps you do, too.

The concepts of Teshuvah (return and repentance), Tefilah (prayer) and Tzedakah (justice through good works) - the litany words of the holy days, have already begun to echo in my mind. Tefilah and Tzedakah are frankly the easier ones for me. They may not be for you… but each of us has different comfort levels with our relationship to our faith.

Teshuvah may be the most complex because it requires a phenomenal amount of self-assessment as well as action. Our only way of knowing whether or not we’ve succeeded is by listening to the still, small voice within that tells us whether or not we are being truly sincere. The silence that allows that listening is hard to create. The tradition also calls for the blowing of the shofar each morning of the month of Elul except for Shabbat. That piercing and unique sound is our wake up call. So we have a tremendous noise to help us invoke the most compelling silence of the year. These days are different days. We have work to do on our selves. We have work to do on our souls.

I have some favorite wake up call phrases as well. These are phrases that work on my inner self, that jog my spiritually-dulled spirit awake. No matter how hard I try, it is impossible to stay alert to spiritual possibilities every moment. We all need triggers. For me, many of them come from the High Holy Day liturgy because it is such an “in your fac,” “nowhere to hide” service. You can drift through a lot of the “people Israel” liturgy and know it’s talking about you, but on the Holy Days it’s personal. This is the one time of year that it’s all about your own relationship with your “Other” however you define it. This is where my number one wake up call phrase comes in. It is simply “Know before Whom you stand.” In the traditional interpretation, and for me, I stand before the Power that Makes for Salvation, which is my definition of God. When I am working my way through the self-assessments of Elul, I am aiming for the moment when I hope I will stand and be able to release the darkness from the past year that has built up in my soul. But that’s only part of it. Because not only do I stand before God on the Holy Days, I stand before the mirror of my soul… I stand before myself. If I’ve done my Elul and Holy Days meditations right, the internal conversation will be complete on Yom Kippur and I will feel cleansed and ready to begin anew. That is also a key part of my wake up call at this time of the year. I must set my own standards and then make my own judgment of myself. So do you. You will know how you’ve done by how ready you are to start over again. Trust me on this.

However, those moments aren’t limited to the Holy Day service; our religion is not boxed into a holy day only experience. If you’ve learned anything from our correspondence, I hope you’ve learned that from my ramblings. That’s the beauty of Elul. Teshuvah, Tefilah and Tzedakah are ongoing processes that culminate on the Holy Days. The Holy Days are the final assessment times – the time to fill in the blanks, as it were. Right now we’re supposed to be turned inward, looking backward, looking around. Right now we’re supposed to be saying, “How did I do?” “Who have I hurt?” “What must I fix?” Right now we’re supposed to be thinking, “What more can I do in the future?” “How can I become more godly?” “How can I make the world more whole?” “How can I make myself more whole?” Right now the conversation is with ourselves about what kind of human beings we have been and what kind of human beings we want to become.

The opportunity Elul and the Holy Days give us is to check up not just on how we are in the moment (a very Zen-like and wonderfully important thing to do) but also to see how we’ve done since our last Holy Days. We are not just doing a soul check up we are doing a life check up. We are looking at the real us. That’s why the Tzedakah (justice through good works) piece of the litany carries equal weight with the Teshuvah (repentance and return) piece. We are assessing the whole person during these forty days. That is both the burden and the beauty of Judaism. 

However, we are also given a wonderful reassurance at this time. We are reminded again and again through the liturgy that we are supposed to be “aiming” in the right direction. The Al Het prayer uses that imagery literally. No one is expected to have perfected him or herself. No one is expected to have fully completed the “becoming” but we are supposed to have our eyes on the target… and be clear about what the target is about… and then…

Teshuvah, Tefilah, and Tzedakah are the tools that can get us there….

Tefilah will be the topic of my early September letter…

Still dreaming of peace and a New Year that will bring it…

Barbara

Early August  
 
Dear Friends,

I’ve been thinking about role models a lot since watching the Tour de France.  By this time, most Americans know the amazing story of Lance Armstrong.  A world-class cyclist but not a superstar, he was stricken with testicular cancer which went to his lungs and his brain.  He fought back – and since he was already a famous athlete with a drive that few possess or even understand – he demanded and got funded a treatment program that brought him back from the brink of death and allowed him to not only race again, but race better.  He also underwent a psychological and spiritual rebuilding in the process that was as powerful as his physical recovery.  When he emerged from this incredible testing of body and soul he was literally as well as figuratively a changed man.  Not only did he become a totally different kind of cyclist, capable of winning the Tour de France an unprecedented six times, he had become the creator of the Lance Armstrong Foundation and an advocate for cancer research, especially pediatric cancer research that has brought millions upon millions of dollars to the struggle to find new treatment programs and hopefully cures for this dreaded disease.  Today you cannot go anywhere without seeing the yellow Lance Armstrong wristbands with the simple message “Live Strong” which you can buy for $1.00 with all proceeds going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  This man is a role model. 

Now, there are some who will point to his flaws.  He hasn’t done the marriage thing well.  He’s clearly “living in sin” with Sheryl Crow.  He’s also smiling more than I’ve ever seen him smile.  I’m willing to cut him some slack here.  When I think of how many professional sports figures just take the money and run, well, I tip my hat and my heart to Armstrong.  He walks the walk and talks the talk.  He knows about gratitude.  He knows about being given gifts and the responsibility the gifts entail.  He also knows that there was a time he didn’t know about that responsibility and he credits his illness with teaching him about that responsibility.  Not all role models have such dramatic stories or such successes. 

We are each role models whether we want to be or not.  That’s something that I am going to be working on during my Elul meditations in the coming month and so you will be sharing that process with me.  I’ve been struggling a lot with how unthinkingly we impact the world around us with our behavior.  Some of us with public responsibilities do it more often than others… but allow me one other sort of Lance Armstrong story and you’ll see what I mean. 

I was listening to NPR do a story the other day on the Lance Armstrong “Live Strong” bracelets.  They told a story about a man in a checkout line at a sporting goods store who bought two of the bracelets (he was already wearing one) and told the cashier to give them to the next two children in line.  She did.  The mother of the two children receiving the bracelets proceeded to buy two more and repeated the request to give them to the next two children in line.  The cashier said the buying of bracelets went on all day… two dollars at a time.  The man who began the process was a role model and he will never be forgotten, by the NPR audience, by the cashier, by the people in the line, by you or by me… and we don’t know his name. 

That same checkout line could have been the scene of some nasty person being rude to the cashier and a child in line would have witnessed that as appropriate adult behavior.  No human interaction at all, no thank you, no excuse me, could also have been the model.  Every moment of our lives we are teaching “this is what it is like to be human”.  This is what it is like to live in the world and be part of it.  I sometimes wonder if we thought of ourselves all the time as examples of what we want to teach the next generation, how we would behave.  (Do you think that people who put obscene bumper stickers on their cars and trucks ever think about six year olds in the cars behind them and the parents who are struggling to explain what the words mean?)  
Anyway, Elul is coming… the month when we are preparing ourselves for the personal examination of our year and our teshuvah, our return and repentance during the High Holy Days.  Elul begins on August 18th so my late August letter will start the process.  I hope you will join me in working through this most introspective time.  I’ve found it to be truly worthwhile as I approach the Holy Days with open heart and mind. 

I also hope that those of you in the San Diego area will be joining me on August 15th at 1:00 at Dor Hadash for our first ever talk about “organized Judaism” and where it may be going… Our website at www.dorhadash.org has directions.  If we have fun, we’ll do it again.  
 
Still dreaming of peace,
 
Barbara

Late July 2004

Dear Friends,

As I look at my calendar I see that at sundown tonight it is Tisha b’Av – the 9th of Av – a full fast day – traditionally the darkest day on our religious calendar.  This is the day, we are told, when both the First and the Second Temple were destroyed.  It is the day when the Jews of England were expelled from that country in 1290 and from Spain in 1492.  Many other great tragedies in Jewish history were said to have occurred on the 9th of Av.  Suffice it to say that symbolically this is our greatest day of mourning.  In the synagogue the Book of Lamentations is read and we try and imagine the despair our ancestors felt at losing their center, their source, their home – both religiously and literally.

However, Tisha b’Av in 70 C.E., the date of the destruction of the Second Temple, also marked something quite amazing.  It marked the beginning of the Talmudic era.  It marked the time when out of the ashes something new and great emerged in Jewish life – the concept of Midrash – the interpretation of Torah – the Oral Law - the idea of a living Torah.  This was when Judaism became portable – a religion that could be legitimately practiced anywhere in the world.

The Rabbis had a choice. They could have stood still. They could have supported building another Temple somewhere else and continuing ritual sacrifice and the Priestly rituals but the world had been changing while the Temple practice stood relatively still. There were “cults” and other groups growing up and threatening the Temple practice. Jewish “progressives” were quietly at work though and when the opportunity arose they were ready. Hellenism had permeated their world both for good and bad.  So they took what was best in the life around them.  They took modern thought and embraced it. They realized that contemporary Jews, the new Jews, were asking more questions, looking for new kinds of answers, and so from that the whole Talmudic-Rabbinic tradition was born. This was the birth of the Judaism we practice today, what the great thinker Arthur Waskow calls the Second Age of Jewish peoplehood.

Tisha b’Av is also the last link of the calendar cycle. Our next holiday is Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. What does it say about us as a people that a commemoration of total destruction is how our year ends? The month of Av is followed by the month of Elul, and for my long-time readers, you know that month is our “prep” month for the High Holy Days.  We are left with the bitter taste of Tisha b’Av lingering in our mouths as we prepare our souls for self-examination.  How does that set us up for what lies ahead?

I am drawn, initially, to the image of the Phoenix – the Greek mythological creature, who is destroyed by fire but is reborn again and again.  The problem for me, however, is that the Phoenix is unchanging. Judaism was reborn from the Temple’s destruction in a new and better for, a form that met the needs of the more modern world. The form that grew from the 70 C.E. Tisha b’Av ashes worked in Babylonia and Greece and Egypt and everywhere Jews traveled in their exile from Jerusalem. I, too, will be different on Rosh Hashanah… reborn in new form if I do my Elul meditations well. I wish the same for you. The parallels are both large and small.

As I think about grieving over the destruction of the Temples, of the exiles, of the horrors that have befallen the Jews in times past… I also am struck with another thought.  From this great tragedy in our history there have been brilliant changes that have kept Judaism alive and growing.  The fact that Judaism is still a religion that is practiced today is proof of that fact. The Diaspora today is now struggling with its own fight with modernism, much as the Rabbis struggled in 70 C.E.  Since the winners always write the history, we’ll never know how many voices called for a rebuilding of the Temple somewhere, or the resumption of sacrifices…but I’m sure there were many.  I believe without a doubt, if those voices had won, there would be no Judaism today. I wonder how many of the great Talmudic Rabbis worried that they might have been wrong – that without sacrifices and Priests, Judaism would not survive.

So on this Tisha b’Av, I can be sad for a moment. I also am capable of looking at our history as a teaching that gives me strength.  Because of the tragedies of Tisha b’Av, our people were forced to take a look at who they were and what they wanted and great things grew from that discussion. Torah became a living document that still today can speak to us. Fixed practice became subject to debate.  Law needed explanation. Good people were permitted to disagree.  Story became a way to interpret obscure legal issues.  We were all invited in to the conversation and the practice of our religion.  Amazing and wonderful things were underway. I think that is the case again today.

I want to finish with a paragraph from Arthur Waskow’s wonderful book Seasons of Our Joy.  He also talks about Tisha b’Av as marking the end of the Talmudic Era. I never agree with everything he says… but I love how he says it.  So I’ll let him close for me:

If we wish to learn from Tisha b’Av, we can face the “death” of the Talmudic era in its age-old form. And by doing this we can preserve its seed, bring it to birth again. If in the generation of the Temple’s Destruction what was “born” was the Diaspora and the Talmud, then we must notice that in our own generation what has already been born is both the State of Israel and a free Diaspora.…

What is yet to be born in this generation?  A new path of Jewish life, a new dream – Torah that can transform our daily practice, that can preserve a seed from the Biblical era, preserve a seed from the Talmudic era, embody the new Jewish secularism, and go beyond them by continuing the Torah process.

If we wish to learn from Tisha b’Av we can read…with joy the verse of Lamentations "Chadesh yamenu k’kedem.  Make new our days as of old.”  Make new the days of the year, as we circle back to Rosh Hashanah.  Make new the generations of our people, as we circle forward to the Third Age of Jewish peoplehood.  Not “Give us back the good old days,” but “make our days full of newness, as You did long ago.”

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Still dreaming of peace and hoping to see some of you on August 15th,
 
Barbara

Late June 2004
 
Dear Friends,

The responses I received to my last letter left me in somewhat of an emotional turmoil.  On the one hand I was thrilled at the number of you who are struggling, as I am, to find new forms of relevancy in their Jewish practice that will bring them closer to the path they know is there for them.  On the other, I read in your responses real despair and frustration and even anxiety that Judaism, and perhaps even all of organized religion, might not be moving with us (or moving at all).  A lot of us are feeling abandoned.  Then I opened up one of the local Jewish papers and there was an article from a respected Conservative Rabbi talking about how one kind of halacha (the seemingly immovable Jewish law) has throughout history been used constructively to change other spiritually deadening halacha when concerned and learned rabbis have determined it was in the best interests of the Jewish people.  (In other words, some laws trump other laws for the good of the people.) He was wondering if it wasn’t time for the Conservative movement to be addressing the issue of change as well – shortening the liturgy, adding instruments to the service, jazzing things up to bring folks back in to the synagogue.  Just because it has been one way for a long time doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.  Wow…

So I’m saying to myself… hmmm… we’re coming out of the closet here.  We’re all dipping our toes in to the waters of change.  Now, not everyone is willing to cannonball into the deep end of the pool.  That’s usually the job of us radical folks standing on the far end of the spectrum shouting, “Come in, the water’s fine… Yes, girls can be called to Torah!  Yes, you can evoke the “Matriarchs” along with the “Patriarchs” and the Western Wall won’t fall!  Yes, a Jewish child brought up with a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, trained in religious school and called to Torah, will stay Jewish just as long as the alternative… maybe forever… maybe not.”    Over time, after everyone dried off from Mordecai Kaplan’s cannonball of his daughter Judith being called to Torah, things seemed to work out o.k.  Even the Orthodox now have something they call a Bat Mitzvah, even if their “girls” aren’t called to Torah.  Change can happen across the spectrum in American Jewish practice.

We are seeing the entire “organized Jewish Community”, which has been charged with this truly impossible responsibility to transmit learning, traditions and religion to the most diverse Jewish population in history, having a little bit of a healthy nervous breakdown, I think.  It’s happening because the old ways aren’t working and frankly, the breakdown was inevitable because the task is too enormous.  The majority of American Jewry has walked away from the responsibility of practicing Judaism and has asked its institutions to be there to pick up the pieces for them so in times of need, be it a Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration, a wedding or a funeral, someone will be around who remembers the prayers or the melodies or the rules.  In the meantime, practicing Jews of all kinds are struggling to keep their institutions alive on a shoestring.  We are having a giant disconnect.

Our job, as people who care about the future of Judaism and specifically our particular practice of it, is to administer a bit of group therapy to ourselves and figure out how to pick ourselves up and get going.  How do we grow ourselves into meaningful living institutions that matter for the people we are and the people we want to be.  We need to ask ourselves the kinds of questions we would ask if we were all in the midst of a kind of spiritual breakdown, I think.  We need to ask ourselves what pieces of our history and our tradition are our true building blocks and what pieces are decorations?  What do we need to help us travel the path we want to travel to become the kinds of Jews we know we ought to be and what are we carrying just because someone told us once we needed to carry it.  I know that I have boxes in the garage I’ve been moving for almost 30 years that have never been unpacked.  I don’t even know what’s in them but I know at one point in my life I thought they were worth moving.  They’re probably my old English Lit textbooks or maybe old theater reviews… I have no idea… but I worry that the next eyes that will look at them are my kids when they are planning the “Estate Sale” and the landfill will see them next.  You know what I mean?  We all carry stuff like that along… and we do that in our religious lives too.  I learned that when we were planning for my first son’s Bar Mitzvah celebration.  My non-Jewish husband would ask, “Why do we have to do that?” in response to some custom such as what we were serving at the Kiddush lunch, and I would say, “because we just do…” and I realized the baggage labeled “traditions” that I was hauling was heavy and unexpected but very real.  That’s the baggage we need to unload and inspect.

I wonder what would happen if we tried to sort ourselves out not as movements but by how we vision our Jewish practice.  As an Educator, I’m always fascinated when a parent comes in to tell me that a particular subject is very important for their child to learn in Religious School.  It’s always the stuff that the parent loved because that’s what made them feel Jewish.  It rarely has anything to do with Judaism per se… its just what made them feel connected.  It usually has to do with their best religious schoolteacher, or their best camp experience.  If I said that to the parent, they would deny it… but I’ve seen it too many times to doubt its accuracy.  So, we could become movements based on cultural identity, historical identity and/or religious identity.  It would be a lot easier to teach that way, frankly.  Or we could have tracks – If you wanted your child to have Spiritual School, they’d go on Mondays, Zionism School would be on Tuesdays, Jewish History (including why there are so many Jewish Nobel Laureates and so few Jewish Jocks) on Wednesdays, well – I’m getting silly… but you see my point.  No wonder we need therapy!

So, some closing thoughts… and some homework…
 
Last July when I tried to have you folks write this letter for me while I was on vacation, it didn’t go so well… I’m going on vacation this weekend for two weeks and I’ve decided for the first time in three years to skip one letter and return to writing for late July… so you have homework in the interim…

I’d like you to think about the following questions and let me know what you think about them… If you’re willing….

• If you had to pick a single path of Judaism to follow (spiritual, historical, traditions, cultural, Zionist or make up your own) could you do it?
• When you think about your own religious training, what caused you to love Judaism the best – honestly?
• When you follow a fixed traditional liturgy, is it a help or a hindrance in your own prayer work?
• Would you like to be able to have help in prayer work in a group setting?
• Are you comfortable praying in Hebrew? Would you like more of the service translated into English?
• Would a liturgy with prayers translated into alternative forms (more like poems/prayers rather than literal translations) on the facing pages make services more meaningful for you?
• Would you attend a class on the liturgy? Would you do that in order to make service attendance more meaningful or just as an intellectual exercise?
• Can you see a way to make Shabbat observance work for you as a spiritual path?
• Are you a private prayer person or does communal prayer work?
• If you are a private prayer person, has communal prayer ever worked?  When?
• What’s the moment when you felt most connected to a religious community? Any religious community? What was happening? What were you doing? Why? Is it re-creatable? Why or why not? Can you do it?

You see, I think our biggest obstacle to success is thinking it’s somebody else’s job to figure out who we are and what’s important to us.  I want to take what we’re all thinking about and mush it around and see what we’re talking/thinking about… and maybe I can have something to share by late July…  Remember it’s all anonymous unless you choose otherwise…
 
Still dreaming of peace,
 
Barbara

Early June

Dear Friends,

I’m struggling with being a professional Jew these days… well, not really. I’m struggling with being affiliated with “the organized Jewish community,” because when I look around organized Judaism seems to be doing a pretty bad job at its primary mission, as I would define it – being the center for spiritual and religious growth and practice for those who are seeking answers and comfort and redemption. I sit on committees that are full of almost desperate other “professionals,” Rabbis, Educators, Synagogue Presidents– who are trying, without much success, to figure out ways to bring people back into synagogues.

It is incredibly hard, when you believe that what you are currently doing is right, to acknowledge that we are in the midst of a massive change in religious attitude. Reconstructionists especially should be alert to what is going on and be in the forefront of this change. I believe that this time, for Judaism, could be as significant as the 2nd century C.E. I believe that as with the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which changed forever our focus from the Temple in Jerusalem to our synagogues in the Diaspora, we are now looking to American Jewry for another change – and American Jewry has to step up to the plate, as it were, and deliver.

American Judaism is a religion practiced by people of all races, creeds and colors. We are the most intermarried of all Jews. We are the most “diluted” of all Jews. I believe that we represent the future of Judaism as it begins to develop into primarily a religion. I know this is a difficult concept. For many the idea of Jewish “culture” takes precedence over Jewish “religion” – but as intermarriage surpasses the 50% mark, cultural identity will inevitably disappear and what will remain is the religion. When the next Jewish generation intermarries, and it will, the cultural connection will dilute even more, and ethnic foods will come out for holidays, but what we will have to hold us together is the religion. The culture will be in competition with all the other ethnicities that have joined together in our synagogues to practice the Jewish religion. America is creating a new kind of Jew and we need to be ready to serve those Jewish needs.

If that scares you, you can do what some are suggesting. You can fight intermarriage. You can encourage the building of progressive day schools so that our children spend most of their time with other Jews. However, I believe the writing is on the wall – intermarriage in America is here to stay and you can stand behind the curve lamenting the fact or in front of it planning for the future. I want to be in front, but there are very few people willing to play this game with me. It’s a little scary. The model we currently live with has been around, evolving slowly, for a very long time. I also think the evolution I’m talking about will take a very long time – but I also think it’s inevitable.

However, this will be an enormous problem for the thousands of Jews who very comfortably define themselves culturally, but not religiously, as Jewish. I wonder, though, how that stacks up against the convert who has no cultural connection to Judaism but has studied for years, been to the mikvah, attends services and Torah study regularly, and defines herself as religiously Jewish. Are we talking about an apple and an orange? Judaism is a fruit salad, perhaps… but I am afraid that as time goes on being a cultural Jew will not sustain Judaism… but being a Jew who practices the religion will.

I also think that this issue transcends Judaism… It reaches out to all mainstream religions that are scratching their heads as their membership falls… wondering why what always has been is no longer enough, while evangelical churches and new age movements and self-awareness groups are exploding everywhere. Americans are searching for spiritual/religious meaning.
We have folded our arms and waited complacently in our edifices because what we have has worked for us… while the world outside has been changing… We have even helped make the external changes happen… but it has been outside our walls… while our core liturgies and structures seem untouched…

It may be time to open the doors, windows, and maybe even knock down a few walls.

To be continued…

Shabbat Shalom as I am still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late May, 2004
 
 
Dear Friends,
 
Ever since I was a little girl I have had a “thing” about Manzanar, the Relocation Center in Inyo County in the Eastern Sierras where Japanese-Americans were held during World War II. When Michael and I moved to San Diego and the kids were old enough for road trips (i.e. big enough to look out the car windows) we started taking short trips in February to Bishop, California to play in the snow. We loved Bishop and we loved the long ride up 395 through the Owens Valley with the Sierras looming over us. Driving home each year we would stop at a simple roadside marker that was all there was marking the spot where one of the greatest injustices to American citizens was ever perpetrated. It became a ritual stop for us – an American “never forget” that we wanted imprinted in our children’s psyches.  Bit by bit, thanks to the unswerving efforts first of the Japanese-American community and then others who took up their cause, a memorial site at Manzanar began to grow. Today it is a National Historical Site, and in April of this year a magnificent museum (in content if not in architecture – since it is housed in the original gymnasium at the site) has opened to remind us of the fragility of our Bill or Rights and the absolute vigilance with which it must be guarded. This Memorial Day weekend, I want to remember Manzanar with you since I was blessed with the opportunity to visit it again this last week.

Sixty-two years ago Executive Order 9066 was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordering the detention of ultimately 120,000 American citizens of Japanese descent in what were called Relocation Centers, Internment Camps and Citizen Isolation Camps for the duration of World War II. Manzanar was one. Located in isolated parts of the barren west, in towns like Gila, Arizona, Topaz, Utah, Tule Lake, California and of course, Manzanar, loyal Japanese Americans (not German-Americans, it must be noted) were forced to leave their homes, their business and their friends to live in harsh barracks without privacy, comfort or with the protection of their civil liberties as citizens. It was a shameful time.

This museum and this entire Historic Site is an ironic but important tribute to the American character that must be supported because it acknowledges that we made a terrible mistake and we know we must learn from it. It shows us, warts and all, as we stripped a proud group of citizens of their civil liberties and their honor because we were led into a racist mindset that blamed all Japanese for the actions of a nation to which Japanese-Americans no longer owed allegiance. Does it sound familiar?

The museum reminds me of a holocaust museum exhibit that stops short of the death camps (thank God). There are the screaming newspaper headlines calling the Japanese horrible names and blaming them for awful and untrue things. There are identity cards that you can take to follow the lives of people who were bent and often broken by the internment experience. There are full-size exhibits of the barracks these private people were forced to share. There is a gigantic mural of the magnificent Sierra Nevada range bound with real barbed wire as you walk in the door. This is unbelievably America.

Towards the end of the exhibit is an entire room devoted to Civil Liberties and their fragility. How many of us are willing to acknowledge connections to the natural instincts of human kind to look for some “them” to blame for our fears? How comfortable it is to want the easy identifiers, the easy test, the easy racial profiling? The museum at Manzanar doesn’t shy away from these big questions. The last room of the exhibit demands that we confront our natural instincts to tighten the rules to protect ourselves. We are confronted with the slippery slope the Patriot Act has put us on and warned of the vigilance it demands of us. It is a brave exhibit and I can’t imagine a more appropriate place for the questions to be raised.

So this Memorial Day weekend as we honor those who have fallen in defense of our country, I would like to especially honor the men who served in the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who fought bravely for this country in World War II. I also want to honor those who suffered through internment and remained loyal Americans despite being treated so shabbily by a country that took too long to acknowledge its mistakes. I also want to remind us all that we must be guardians of our civil liberties above all else, because that is what keeps America great… and that is what our military fought for and still fights for…no matter what the agendas of our political leadership.

“Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it”…. We know that… We need to be vigilant about what we are willing to give up when someone tells us to be afraid… We need to be very sure that the security we seek isn’t more dangerous than the risks we may face…
 
Have a happy and thoughtful Memorial Day Weekend…
 
Still praying for peace…
 
Barbara

Early May

Dear Friends,

I’m sitting at my computer at home listening to the birds sing through the open window. The sun is shining (it is San Diego, after all) and the weather, which has been unseasonably warm, seems to have settled back into our normal perfect climate. My dog and cat are both sleeping on the floor behind me. I don’t have to go into work for several hours. I have a cup of coffee sitting on the desk beside me. All I have to do is write to you. The morning stretches before me with open-ended possibilities.

Today I want to write about moral courage. I want to think about how rarely we talk in those terms and how important it is that we brush up on them. Religious education that teaches how to make choices, how to say no in the face of a moral wrong, is becoming more and more important to me. Without the absolute guidelines of right and wrong, I now realize, our children may grow up to be soldiers who torture prisoners in Iraq or government leaders who don’t know how to say they made a mistake. If this topic will offend you – please stop reading now… this letter is political and pro-peace. You can rejoin me in late May.

I believe that there are some absolutes in the world. I believe that there are lines that you do not cross in terms of behavior. I believe that I have watched my country cross some of those lines and I am broken hearted because I grew up thinking that we were always the good guys. However, that doesn’t stop my obligation to teach, to study, and to write about these absolutes which my faith has taught me. We do not treat prisoners this way. It is against international law and it is against moral law.

Our job now is to raise a cry of moral outrage against a Defense Department that allows this kind of treatment to go on, so that this never happens again. Our job now is to raise a cry of moral outrage against an administration that has declared an entire nation “terrorist” so our under-trained soldiers and “mercenaries” treat civilian prisoners as if they are Osama bin Laden. Our moral stance is the high ground. This administration is acting as if the people of the Middle East are lesser beings – waiting to be shown the “light” of western civilization and truth. This is the Crusades all over again. This is scary. This is wrong. Who are we to tell a people who have a civilization that dates back to Abraham that we have the solution for them? We did what we came for. We got rid of Sadaam. What chutzpah this administration is demonstrating. This isn’t about what God wants for the Iraqis. This is about what George Bush and his friends want… whether it be for oil or for a particular religious belief, it is still wrong. You don’t use military force to invade another country and abuse its people in order to “liberate” them when they clearly don’t want you there.

So where does the moral courage come in?

It comes in when people say you are being unpatriotic in opposing the war. Your moral courage is called on when you are able to say you are being patriotic because you want America to return to its core values. It comes in when you raise questions about why the administration doesn’t want you seeing pictures of the war dead. Your courage shows when you are able to say that families have the right to see their sons and daughters' flag-draped coffins honored by the national media even if the reality is painful. It comes in when you question why the president really chose to put all his energy into the war in Iraq when Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia was the source of much of the terrorist funding. It comes in when you ask why the major media companies started canceling advertisements against the war and television programs and movies that they believe may be critical of the administration despite the continual hue and cry that the media is “too liberal." It comes in when you are able to say, I support the troops, but I do not support this administration. It is being able to say we have made a mistake, we have handled this the wrong way, we need help from the community of nations, we need to bring our troops home and we need to focus our energy and our resources on the real war on terrorism – not on failed nation building that is costing us American and Iraqi lives.

I believe that we are teetering on the edge of losing forever the high ground of the Golden Medina that called our ancestors to settle in this wonderful country. America was once a place where our children were taught to believe that justice and liberty were absolute values. Certainly we have had our dark moments – slavery – McCarthyism – times when things have not been as pure as our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution promised… but never before have we been so hated in the world at large. There is a reason for it, too, and that is what is breaking my heart. I love this country… but as I said too often while marching in Washington against the war in Vietnam… I hate this war.

So, I hope I haven’t offended too many of you, but I believe that religious people cannot cede the “religious ground” to those who are supporting the war. I cringe whenever the president, as a reason for this war, invokes “God’s purpose.” God’s purpose is not to bring democracy to the people of Iraq. If God has a purpose for the people of Iraq, it is to bring them peace, and that sure isn’t happening now. Frankly, I don’t see God taking sides – my God vision doesn’t play games like that… because if we are all God’s creatures – the last thing God wants is us killing each other. We need to be brave and speak up and ask questions and be proud of our convictions… and remember that the high ground has the best view…

Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara

Late April

Dear Friends,

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a group of teenagers who are active in our synagogue to discuss the future of our congregation. Our entire community is engaged in these conversations, but I was lucky enough to be the person assigned to “facilitate” the discussion with our teens. These are young people who volunteer, come to classes and have stayed connected… and so have a perspective that flies in the face of the stereotype that teenagers don’t care. They like being part of the synagogue community. I found their reasons to be worth sharing because they have the clarity of truth without the overlays of adult disclaimers.
They had many basic and good reasons for their participation. They wanted to continue learning about being Jewish. They wanted to use what they had already learned. They wanted to give back after all that had been given to them. They liked the feeling of being at services. They liked our life cycle rituals. They liked the values, the ideals, and the sense that you could believe what you wanted and express your own ideas and no one would put you down. However from my perspective, the most important thing that was said that day was the belief that they never would have found each other if the synagogue didn’t exist.

What an incredible celebration of community that statement is. What an amazing affirmation of belonging. I realized, too, how hard it is for us, as adults, to find a place to find each other. Adults generally live in two worlds – work and home. At work there are all kinds of walls and roles you have to play. You can’t let down too much. You have to protect your image, whether you work in a large office or on your own. You’ve got to bring in a paycheck and succeed at what you do. At home there is certainly plenty of opportunity for support and spiritual search and letting down… but there’s also the kids and the laundry and the shopping and the bills and the yard and all the other tasks staring you in the face when you walk through the door.

The synagogue, however, is different. This is a place that is set up to be the “exhaled breath” or the “untied knot” of spiritual release. This is the place that when you walk through the door, the faces you see are not supposed to remind you of folding laundry, but of fulfilling your purpose in the world, whatever that may be. This is the place where the faces you see are supposed to remind you that you are never alone. The faces you see are supposed to reassure you that in times of need, they have you covered. The synagogue is where we find people like us to get us through the dark days and the joyous days and who can feel what we feel and talk about things that matter and it isn’t risky – because its our religious home.

The teenagers know this, in their own way. They know that they are safe in the synagogue to talk and behave the way they really are. The outside world may force them to act in ways that don’t feel quite right… but within the community, they are completely themselves. We adults should feel tha,t too.

I think we do that more often than not. I feel it at services, whether they are in the sanctuary or at a shiva minyan. It can even sneak up on us unawares – after a child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah or another major life cycle event. I know that for many people, the connection to a religious community is a powerful and sacred tie. I just don’t think that we cherish it or acknowledge it enough.

We all want to belong. We all want a place where we can still ask the big questions and feel safe. We all want a group of supportive people who will be there for us when we are in need. We are a searching people and the search is both a singular and a collective search. Searching alone can be meaningful but also very tiring. Every once in a while it is good to remember that belonging was Mordecai Kaplan’s first criteria in his definition of Judaism. Our teenagers understand that and so should we

Still dreaming of peace,
Barbara

Early April

Dear Friends,

One of the wonderful things about the adult study of Judaism is stumbling across great models for modern spiritual growth in our old rituals.  As a child, the Counting of the Omer, the additional liturgical piece added between Pesach and Shavuot, meant practically nothing to me.  For forty-nine days this harvest ritual went on in the Temple, relating to the interval between the two pilgrimage festivals.  As time went on, the meaning of the count evolved to also represent the time between the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Sinai.  That’s the meaning I want to write about today.

The slaves who left Egypt with Moses were an uneducated people who had very little religious ritual practice that we would recognize today. They had a relationship to the One God dating back to Abraham. Joseph’s greatness in Egypt was long past.  The people Israel identified with the ancient instructions to Abraham – monotheism and circumcision were what set them apart.  In forty-nine days that would all change – if we take the Torah literally. In forty-nine days God would offer the people Israel the whole package of Torah and Israel would accept.

For many of us, that is incomprehensible. To go from an uneducated people to a disciplined ritually bound people in under two months is amazing.  But Torah tells us the people Israel changed forever at Sinai. That’s sufficient for my point. Beyond that, it is up to each of us to make our peace with the Sinai story – as truth or as metaphor.

But, back to the Omer…  Here’s my take on this period of time.  What we have designed for us as a people is forty-nine days of preparation for change.  In the same way that the month of Elul gives us time for the personal preparation for the Holy Days – the period between Pesach and Shavuot gave the people Israel the testing in the desert to prepare for Sinai.  As the Omer count goes on, we are given the perfect opportunity to do some serious thinking about where we as Jews today should be heading.  For many of us, a little uncomfortable with the current state of our religious life or “official” Judaism, we have before us an officially designated “prep time” for change.  Wouldn’t it be meaningful to use it?
 
Judaism has so many different faces today. When we read Torah there is just one people Israel. There are dissidents, but they are quickly dealt with (and not too kindly, if you read the text).  But as time moves on we see non-violent and philosophical schisms develop – especially after the destruction of the Temple.  We begin to reflect the lands we settle in.  We begin to take on the cultures that surround us.  Then the movements begin and things really start to change. This is not a bad thing. This is a steady continuous change that has been going on for more than two thousand years. We can’t go back to Egypt – or to Temple worship. We need to keep moving forward and embracing the future thoughtfully and respectfully. We need to not be afraid of change.

I think that this is the perfect time to do some thinking about where Judaism should be headed. It can’t sit still forever.  It won’t sit still forever – it never has. We have a choice. We can be part of the change or we can sit back and let the change happen because we don’t care about it. What a shame it would be to be given an opportunity as rich as this and let it pass us by…

One of my favorite Talmudic quotes is from Rabbi Tarfon in Pirke Avot II:20 where he says, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”  We all are part of the solution – when we are uncomfortable with how things are going.

Still dreaming of peace,

Barbara

Late March
 
Dear Friends,
 
Mohammed called us the People of the Book, but in reality, we are the People of the Books. We have many and they serve many needs. With Passover fast approaching, we are about to break out one of our favorites, the Haggadah, and I began wondering how many of us have really stopped to think about all our “books” and how distinctly different the Haggadah is from all the rest.

We have the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible), our various Siddurim (prayerbooks) for Shabbat, Festivals and weekdays, our Machzorim (High Holy Day prayerbooks), the specialty books for houses of mourning, for praying before and after meals, the Mishnah and Talmud… well the list is long. Although the various movements may have different versions or translations of these texts, none of them are open to the laity to cut, paste and edit.

The one category of religious text where the rules all change is with our Haggadot, the plural for the Passover narrative that we read each year at our Seder tables. We have hundreds of varieties for us to choose from. There are traditional versions completely in Hebrew, there are feminist Haggadot, Freedom Haggadot, there was for many years a Haggadah in support of Soviet Jewry, there are children’s coloring book versions, a great take off on Dr. Seuss called Uncle Eli’s Haggadah, and a range of poetic, solemn and everything in between versions. Bookstores are full of them – Maxwell House coffee used to give them away for free – everyone has their favorite. It’s an amazing phenomenon. In no other area of our ritual lives do we find this outpouring of creativity and ownership then in the development of the family Haggadah.

I grew up with the Reconstructionist Movement’s 1945 New Haggadah. In 2000 the movement published another Haggadah called A Night of Questions, but I can’t give up my old one. The reason why is simple — over the years we’ve poked and prodded and revised the 1945 books to make them our own. They are full of editorial marks and things crossed out and added. There are also things we cherish about the traditions we have in the “old” New Haggadah.  However, I’ve also cut and pasted some things from other sources into the old book which now blend in perfectly with the service. We don’t do that with our Siddurim or Machzorim or other prayerbooks. We own our Haggadot in ways that we own none of our other ritual books.

Here’s my theory why. In reality, everything depends on Pesach night.  At some level each of us who comes to the table understands that. Without the Passover story there is no Judaism. Without the Passover story there is no Moses – there is no Sinai – there is no Torah.

One of the key mitzvot of Pesach is to tell the story so that everyone at the Seder understands it. What a wonderful command! From this moment we learn to be compassionate. We are reminded that we were slaves in Egypt and that is a memory that we are required to carry with us no matter how fancy our table setting or how luxurious the cars in our driveway. We are reminded that if the midwives weren’t willing to withstand the Pharaoh’s decree to kill all the Hebrew baby boys – there would have been no Moses – and so it is not always the act of the leaders who make a difference – but you and I may be called upon as well. We are reminded that even in triumph God demands that we feel the pain of the Egyptians who suffered the plagues, and so as we recite the plagues we sadly remove wine from our cups to diminish our joy. The lessons of Passover are powerful and they are personal and they are heartfelt.

So we know about the importance of Passover and we want it to make sense to us. We don’t want to have a ritual that doesn’t matter. If we are going to clean the house and make special foods and take the time to engage in thinking about our religion and this amazing moment in Jewish time… well, we want it to work… and so we struggle to find a way to tell the story that works for us. No wonder there are so many Haggadot out there in the world just waiting for us to find the perfect one (or maybe write the perfect one).

One of the great things that the Internet has brought us is the opportunity to find incredible resources for developing our own meaningful home rituals for holidays like Passover. I really want to encourage you in the next ten days or so to look for something different to bring to your Passover table this year. There are entire Haggadot on the web waiting for you to download. There are readings and poetry and prayers that can enhance your rituals. In our prayerbooks there are Exodus themes that you can copy and stick in to appropriate moments in your service. You’re in charge… You need to realize that the only thing stopping you from enhancing your own Haggadah and making it really yours is not giving yourself permission to do so… 

At the beginning of almost every Haggadah I’ve ever seen is the basic outline, or order of service. (Seder means order.) If you stick to that and eat matzah and explain what the stuff on the Seder plate stands for… well, the rest is pretty much up to you… Try to find some new readings. I’ll get you started with a couple from A Night of Questions.

Here’s a piece I’ve loved for years and will be familiar to many of you:

So pharaonic oppression, deliverance, Sinai, and Canaan are still with us, powerful memories shaping our perceptions of the political world. The “door of hope” is still open; things are not what they might be – even when what they might be aren’t totally different from what they are… We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has commonly been taken to teach, about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form:

• First, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
• Second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
• And third that “the way to the land is through the wilderness." There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.
  
  -- by Michael Walzer (also in Kol HaNeshemah)

And then another one to read, by Joy Levitt, before eating the maror and haroset mixed together:

From darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, from winter to spring, and now from bitterness to sweetness. But with the light there is still darkness in the world. With our freedom, there are still those who are enslaved. It is still winter for some, and life remains bitter for many throughout our world.

Even in our own lives, we live within the tapestry of these contradictions. It is dark, and it is light; we are trapped, and we are liberated; we are cold, and we are warm; we experience pain and joy, just as we have eaten the maror with the haroset, taking the bitter with the sweet.

Through this act, we acknowledge the fullness of life, shaded by the gradations of experience; never black and white but a reflection of the full range of possibilities.

There are so many other pieces, both secular and religious, from sources ranging from Desmond Tutu to the Prophet Isaiah to your own families thinking about what the festival means to them. Take the opportunity to expand and enrich your Pesach celebration by thinking about what it really means before you sit down this year with family and friends. There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together…

Chag Sameach (a joyous festival) while still dreaming of peace,
 
Barbara

Early March

Dear Friends,

I’ve finally reached overload on the Biblical truth wars. A friend sent me a doctored photograph of a church signboard; you know the kind that gives you a biblical quote to ponder while going about your workweek thinking secular thoughts. This one had the citation: “Leviticus 11:9-12” with the solemn quotation: “Shellfish are an abomination unto the Lord”. Knowing this friend as I do, I was clear this wasn’t a commentary about kashrut. I knew the whole thing was a set up. The joke was brought to us by a website aptly named Godhatesshrimp.com and was clearly a reminder of the foolishness of the current “If the Bible says it, it has to be true” folks who are once again trying to shape public policy. The citation is actually one of the building blocks of kashrut and the section reads as follows: These you may eat of all that live in water: anything in water, whether in the seas or in the streams, that has fins and scales – these you may eat. But anything in the seas or in the streams that has no fins ands scales, among all the swarming things of the water and among all the other living creatures that are in the water – they are an abomination for you and an abomination for you they shall remain: you shall not eat of their flesh and you shall abominate their carcasses. Everything in water that has no fins and scales shall be an abomination for you. The message is clear, you can’t have it both ways – if you want to hate (fill in the blank) just because the Bible tells you to, then you also have to hate shrimp, lobster, Alaska king crab and steamers.

If you are a literalist then the Torah cannot be a buffet line to pick and choose from for rules of behavior. If your defense for hatred is solely that the Bible says it, then everything that is listed as an abomination must also be included in your litany of hate. If you do choose to hate the whole list from this ancient text, then you can point your finger at the Amelekites and the non-believers and the homosexuals and I will defend your right to your position. I will disagree with you, I will argue with you, I won’t even like you, but I will, with heavy heart, also defend your right to believe what you wish as long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. But if you insist that all the mitzvot in Torah are God’s commands except for Leviticus Chapter 11 (so you can eat your shellfish), or if you determine which mitzvot come from God (the ones that fit your personal world view) and you ignore the rest (like being kind to the stranger) – well the only word that comes to mind here is hypocrite (well, bigot works, too).

I believe that mitzvot all come from God in some way (divine inspiration) but what we do with them is our responsibility. God inspired the writers of Torah to develop a code of behavior that was brilliant and far advanced for its time. Some of it has withstood the passage of time with remarkable genius… but some of it hasn’t. We need to be realistic about the text and see it for what it is. (This is the moment when I ask how many of you have read the Torah. Its o.k, I’m not asking for a show of hands, I can’t see you – but it really is worth reading. You are permitted to skip the begats… but I can make an argument for reading them too – just ask me…).

This is a very old book we’re talking about, folks. It does not model true behavior for 2004. Our patriarchs were polygamists for heavens sake! No one seems to object to that when we’re talking about moral imperatives. There is slavery in the Torah – but we managed to fight a Civil War over that and determine as a country that slavery was wrong. We are told to stone our children to death for treating harshly with us. Phenomenal punishments are required for those of us who failed to observe the Sabbath last week (how many of you ceased all work for twenty-four hours?). We really need to work on this true guide to behavior thing a little more.

Torah is all about story that leads to truth – not rules of behavior that are meant to apply to life today. In reality, for Jews our behavioral rules don’t come directly from Torah, but from Talmud (surprise!). If you’ve never looked at the Talmud – just looking at a page or two will give you a much better insight into the “true versus truth” discussion than I ever could. Our Talmudic sages took their own interpretations of Torah and twisted them and turned them and debated them and occasionally turned Torah on its head and then said, “This is what we think it means – this is who disagrees – and this is what you need to do….” God clearly did not write those rules because the Rabbis all signed their work. The Rabbis knew that Torah was not the final word but the primal source.

The Rabbis found great truth within Torah, but not all truth. We need to remember, as they did all those hundreds of years ago, that Torah is alive. It will remain so, but only if we continue to accept the charge that we symbolically receive on Shavuot each year when the Torah is offered to us anew. We are its guardians. When it is used with honor we are enriched. We have an obligation to make sure that we understand what a precious gift it is. If we allow Torah to be frozen in time or to be utilized to discriminate or do harm, we have failed in our responsibilities to ourselves and to the generations that follow. We must not cede the high ground… we must proudly use the language of faith… we must be comfortable in the conversation… When we know whom we are, when we are comfortable with our own sense of self and faith, then the generations that follow will honor us for our integrity and ability to fulfill our responsibilities as guardians of Torah. It cannot and should not be used to justify hatred or discrimination. We as a people should know that above all.

Still dreaming of peace at home and abroad,
Barbara

Late February

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, I am part of a wonderful interfaith marriage that began in 1977, but my friendship with my husband began in 1973. At that time, Michael was finishing his studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York and was about to leave for England to take over as minister of a Methodist Church in the small town of Stevanage. As you may imagine, our dialogues about matters of faith have been rich, respectful and fascinating over the years. We have raised two Jewish sons in the intervening years and have learned a great deal from each other about the enormous wisdom and range of both Judaism and Christianity. I think I can speak for Michael as well as myself in saying that furor surrounding the release of Mel Gibson’s movie about the Passion has been a cause of great sadness and I want to explain why.

Later on, I am going to use Michael’s own words to a Jewish friend of ours in response to her questions about an article on the film by Michael Lerner (the editor of Tikkun magazine). However, I want to first explain why I am so sad. I am sad because I have such enormous respect for Christianity and what it can be at its best, and that best is being overlooked by our expectations of the worst. I am sad because some Jews, without seeing the movie or understanding that there is an even more enormous spectrum of thought in Christianity then there is in Judaism, expect the worst response from their Christian neighbors as a result of seeing this film. I am sad because the making of this film has demonstrated how little we know about each other in this most open of all societies. I am also overwhelmed with sadness at how quickly we Jews seem to batten down the hatches and expect a pogrom.

I also believe that as a Jew I have very little standing in discussing the merits of this film and its “take” on the Passion because it is a profoundly Christian subject. So, I’ll let Michael’s words (italicized and indented) do some teaching:

First, some history:

"Early Christianity, with a predominantly Jewish base, grew slowly and a lot of witnesses probably saw him as a great and radical teacher but within the tradition. Then we have the Pauls of the world who believed that Jesus was much, much more and that the message of Jesus was a message for everybody. To put it bluntly ...Rome ruled...so if the message was to make it past this little back water country mostly populated by Jews, then it had better appeal, or at least not be offensive to Rome. The need to appease Rome and the need to grow the early church colored a great deal of the Gospels and, indeed, the whole New Testament. They were probably written between AD 80 and AD 150. Now the basic problem for Paul was that Jesus was crucified by the Romans who were the only group then and there that (a) used crucifixion and that (b) had the legal authority to enact a death penalty. In my opinion...strictly mine but many would agree.... we don't know who wanted Jesus dead and there is as strong a case for it being Rome as there is it being the "organized Jewish community". But here is the other thing...and this is important.... if the Jews wished Jesus dead this would not have been sufficient to have him crucified by Rome... Rome worked real hard at staying out of local and religious squabbles. My opinion is that politically there was a little Malcolm X thing going on here.... Malcolm managed to anger the dominant white community as well as chunks of the organized black community. In other words the Gospel version is a blatant attempt to suck up to Rome and protect the early church.”

Michael also talks about his own perspective on the crucifixion, and I think that every Jew in America should have the opportunity to learn from a Christian friend what this is really about and not depend on the media or even a non-Christian to explain this. This is why I wanted to have Michael’s words speak to you.

“ I view the crucifixion with profound sorrow. It is an indictment of each and every one of us. We as men and women participate in the crucifixion with every deceit, every pettiness, every deed we do that denies life and love. In the same way that Jews talk about we (us...right here and now) are standing at Sinai, Christians think we all also stand at the foot of the cross...sometimes in tears and sometime as rock throwers and jeerers. It is a seminal event; capturing both our absolute failure (the crucifixion) and our absolute hope (the resurrection.... God so loved the world he gave his only son...and in the face of our failure there was still the resurrection). Trying to look at who to blame for the resurrection reminds me of that famous Pogo (Walt Kelly) quote...."We has met the enemy and he is us."

I have not seen the Gibson movie and probably will not...I am not into graphic violence and I already know the plot. If it raises the question about who is to blame for killing Jesus then it has raised the wrong question (We has met the enemy and he is us). If it raises rage and anger rather than sorrow and regret, then it missed the point. If it shows only our failure without showing the resurrection and the hope, then it has taken us to our darkest place without showing our way past that.

There is a service in my tradition the usually happens on the Thursday evening before Good Friday. It is often an 11 PM service that ends at Midnight. It is a candle light service. At the end of the service celebrants extinguish their candles one at a time and as they do so they reference some sin or shortcoming.... in other words some way they too have participated in the crucifixion. At the end there is one small candle left...just to remind us of what is coming.... and then we leave the church somberly, in silence, and in the dark. Going back to our home to await Easter morning dwelling on how we have killed Jesus.... thus making Easter all the more redemptive and amazing.”

I am trying to believe that there is good that will come out of all this brouhaha. There is an enormous upsurge of interfaith dialogue going on. There is a huge increase of interest in learning about Christianity and what the Gospels are about and the history of the Passion plays and what really happened and who that man Jesus was and the origins of Christianity. We are becoming more and more aware of how closely bound the early Christians and the Jews were, both for good and for bad. We are learning together, painfully perhaps, but we are learning. This can be an enormous opportunity for a breakthrough in understanding. This can be redemptive.

We can’t be afraid. We need to trust our friends. We need to remember who we are and where we are and when we are. I know enough about Christianity to know that it isn’t a religion of anger but of love and compassion. We do our friends, neighbors and family members a profound disservice by not trusting them enough to see this film as one man’s narrow view of his faith – his passion – and his bias. The way past it is for thoughtful people to learn, to talk, to listen, to pray, to remember and to care about one another. We do.

Still dreaming of peace both overseas and at home,

Barbara

Early February

Dear Friends,

For a variety of reasons, this letter is going to continue generally on the subject of paying attention, but from another perspective and in another voice. I’ve been struggling a lot with a growing sense that we are spending too much time worrying about character and not thinking about why it’s slipping away from us. I think its loss is not intentional, but fading merely from lack of use. As with all things, from muscle development to language acquisition to behaving rightly in the world, we’ve got to use it or we lose it.  We have allowed ourselves to avoid doing some things that we should/must do even though they are right and good. We have avoided them just because we perceive them as too hard. We cannot live that way. In these behaviors character is built.

There is a wonderful book called Divine Things: Seeking the Sacred in a Secular Age written by Robert Kirschner. Its one of a number of books I dip into for comfort and inspiration when I’m feeling the need…and yesterday I stumbled across a short essay that I decided should be the centerpiece of my early February letter to you. My more personal voice will return for the late February letter.

The essay is called: It Hurts

“One Saturday afternoon I was called to the county hospital. There was a patient there who they thought was Jewish, although there was no family to confirm it. The patient was dying. He was barely conscious. On my way to the hospital I steeled myself for the ordeal to come. I rehearsed the prayers to recite. I did not know this man. I never would.

I found him in the ward reserved for the indigent. The groaning and the whimpering of the patients was a chorus of agony, what one might dream of hearing in the corridors of hell.  I walked up to the patient. His eyes were open but showed no sign of recognition. I asked him if he had any family. No reply. I touched his hand. No response. I fumbled for a word of comfort. I recited the confession for the dying. He did not seem to hear me.

That’s it, I said to myself. I’ve done my duty. I turned to leave when I heard him say something. He said it again, but I couldn’t make it out. I had to put my ear right next to his mouth. What he was saying was: “It hurts.”

These two words haunt me still. Whether or not they were spoken to me, they pierced me to the heart. It hurts to die all by yourself in a squalid bed. It hurts when no one is close enough to hear you. It hurts when there is no one who cares enough to feel your pain.

Rebbe Moshe Leib of Sassov said that he learned the meaning of love from a conversation he overheard between two old men.

“Tell me, my friend,” said the first. “Do you love me?”

“Of course, I love you,” replied the second.

“Then tell me what hurts me,” said the first.

“But how should I know what hurts you?” replied the second.

The first old man looked at his friend. “How can you say you love me,” he demanded, “when you don’t know what hurts me?”

Dorothea Soelle, the German theologian, has described our culture’s compulsion to avoid this knowledge. She points out that in certain respects it is easy. The privation that is the daily lot of millions is no longer felt by most of us. The world we know is sealed airtight against hunger and cold. Starving children appear only on television, and only for a moment. We do not hear them cry out to us. We do not hear them say, “It hurts.” As long as suffering is sufficiently remote, it is conveniently forgotten.

But this kind of indifference exacts a price. Apathy, as Soelle notes, is a Greek word that literally means “unable to feel.” It means that one does not want to be touched, involved, drawn in. This is how struggling marriages are smoothly terminated, how the ties that bind generations are quickly dissolved, how the sick are removed from the house and the dead from the mind. This is how the curve of our life flattens out, until even the joy does not elate us, even love does not move us. Ours becomes a world without seasons where, in the words of Kahlil Gibran, we laugh, but not all of our laughter, and weep, but not all of our fears. Only then, having so carefully steered clear of all pain, do we find that we have steered clear of life itself.

Given the comforts most of us enjoy and the interests we defend, it is easy enough to turn a deaf ear to the pain of others – not that such deafness is intended. Like novocain, we numb our compassion, nerve by nerve, until at last we put our souls to sleep. But it is then, when we are most oblivious to pain, that we become most capable of inflicting it