A poem and a thought

For this past Shabbat, I prepared a sonnet and a reading. Feel free to use or quote if you find them inspiring / interesting!
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The Sabbath Bride
A Sonnet for Erev Shabbat by David Segal

The Bride arrives, our long-awaited guest,
And wakes Her Bridegroom from His lonely sleep.
From seeds of promise sown of old they reap;
In refuge from their exile, Lovers rest.
From this belated union Blessing flows:
A storm – once threat’ning – smiles and rains down love.
For when divine completeness reigns above,
We children share in heavenly repose.
Yet let us not in reverie neglect
The Source of Blessing worthy of our praise,
But utter words of gratitude and raise
Our souls to God and humbly genuflect.
Our Sabbath Bride will linger but a day:
Awake, O Israel! Hear, Arise, and Pray!

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A Sabbath Ark

As the floodwaters of another week’s storms subside, we, like Noah, gaze out over a world ready to be reborn.

An echo of the first Creation can be heard in the Great Flood: one, a leveling by water; the other, a shattering by light. In each Shabbat, too, we can feel the vibrations – better yet, the reverberations – of the first Shabbat, a weekly commemoration of Creation.

The rainbow serves as a stunning reminder of God’s covenant with us never to send another great flood to destroy humanity, but it commemorates something else, too. Each new rainbow recalls the last and foreshadows the next – a symbol of eternal recurrence. The sky is clear today, but rain will fall again.

Before we can enjoy Sabbath rest, before we can find shelter from the storm, we must each build an ark for our soul. On Shabbat, we set aside the work of the world and take up the work of the spirit.

What did we leave behind in last week’s cleansing rain?
What did we destroy in storms of the spirit?

What will we take with us in next week’s ark?
Will we build it strong enough to weather another week?

As Noah’s Ark was seaworthy, may your Sabbath ark be soulworthy. And may we all find smooth sailing on whatever waters come our way in the days and weeks ahead.

Shabbat shalom.

Holy Limerick #3

And now the third installment in what I hope will eventually be a cycle of 18 limericks. This one was inspired by my realization of the absurdity of the imagery of L'cha Dodi, which welcomes the Sabbath Bride, juxtaposed with the mechitza, which separates men from women in a traditional synagogue.

We welcome Shabbat as a bride
And rejoice as we call her inside.
But - wait - a mechitza?
The first thing that greets 'er?
Guess she'll sit on the opposite side...

Never what again?

Below is a journal entry I wrote in the heat of the moment after a class visit to Yad VaShem, Israel's memorial and museum of the Holocaust. I have succeeded in little more than raising questions; please feel free to suggest answers, or to express criticism or support for anything I have set forth here. Thanks for reading.

In early 2002, after an emotionally draining college course on “Texts and Images of the Holocaust”, I swore off Holocaust movies, literature, and images indefinitely. The combination of helplessness and guilt with which I left the course convinced me that I had been overexposed and that I needed a hiatus from this traumatic topic.

About a year later, I went to see The Pianist with my former professor. As good as I thought the movie was, I was still not emotionally ready to be exposed to that imagery again. So I reinstated my self-imposed ban.

Other than a few sessions and readings on historical analysis of the Holocaust in a Modern Jewish History seminar during my senior year of college (in the spring of 2003), I hadn’t touched the subject until today.

It was, predictably, very hard for me. Much of it I simply walked through with my eyes averted – past images of piles of emaciated corpses, ghetto round-ups, and concentration camp horrors. Once or twice I snuck a peak and was immediately reminded of why I had averted my eyes in the first place:

How many more photos of Holocaust horrors do I need to see before I can legitimately say, “I get it”? Is it even really possible for me to understand? (I think, in the end, no.) What am I learning or gaining by continuing to expose myself to this traumatic imagery? Do I somehow owe it to each victim or survivor to hear their stories and see their pictures? All 6,000,000? This would be an inhuman task. So where am I?

I am, as always, left with the question, What is the point of Holocaust education and commemoration? The typical American answer seems to be something along the lines of “teaching tolerance”. Sometimes that takes the form of making us see ourselves as capable of being perpetrators; sometimes, motivating us – as Americans – to act to ensure that “never again” isn’t just a neat slogan but a political reality. There tends to be a universalistic message of humanitarian hope, where Never Again means Never again will genocide happen on our watch.

Today, it was interesting to look at the Holocaust as seen through Israeli eyes. The exhibit went into more detail than I’ve seen before about both Jews and Righteous Gentiles from various nations (e.g. the North African Jewish community, which I’ve never seen mentioned in a Holocaust exhibit). Ending the exhibit with Hatikva, followed by a panoramic view of Jerusalem just outside the exhibition hall, was a powerful statement of the importance of Israel to Jewish survival – and the importance of anti-Semitism in Israeli and Zionist self-understanding. It was also interesting to see how much Israel’s perception and reception of the Holocaust has changed since the early years of the State. It is not surprising that a glaring instance of Jewish victimization and helplessness would not be a popular State myth for the young Israel. And it is doubly interesting that Holocaust consciousness and anti-Semitism seem to be the norm for Israelis today. That such a vast site as Yad VaShem, with free admission, is situated below the graves of the great leaders of Israel and the honored military dead, makes a powerful statement about the significance of the Holocaust in Israel’s self-understanding. If not a defining event, it seems to be at least a reminder of the imperative of Jewish self-defense and the fragility of Jewish survival – and, thus, the importance of the state.

The complete lack of Arabic in the museum was another indication of the particularistic Jewish message of Yad VaShem, about the need for Jews to defend themselves and to build and protect their nation in Eretz Yisrael. I wouldn’t claim it to be maliciously exclusionary, but it is clear at least that the current conflict with Arabs – indeed, the struggle within Israel to provide equal rights for all regardless of race – did not figure into the consciousness of the architects of the exhibit. Here, Never Again seems to mean Never again will any foe be allowed to bring the Jews to the brink of destruction, nor will we ever again trust anyone but ourselves to save us.

* * *

For me, the most powerful part of the museum was the Righteous Gentiles section. Seeing the personal stories of non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews and others from the Nazi slaughter made me very emotional and filled me with hope (unlike the rest of the exhibit). Interestingly, I found that it was the stories of non-Jews working together with fellow Jews to help save Jewish lives that moved me most. I also got to thinking about the label “Righteous Gentile”, and began to deconstruct it: what does it imply about other gentiles? What does it imply about Jews? Are we Jews by default righteous and thus without need of the label? Are gentiles who do other humanitarian work that doesn’t directly save Jewish lives (but, e.g., saves non-Jewish lives) less worthy of the epithet?

More to the point, I think this section moved me most because it speaks of the need to look beyond race and religion to see the humanity, first and foremost, in an individual. In a frustrating and ironic way, the Jews conceded the race card in the establishment of Israel and its citizenship laws.

Maybe instead of some abstract universalistic lesson about tolerance, or a particularistic call for self-defense and survival, we should use the Holocaust as a tool for teaching techniques of intergroup cooperation and resistance to immoral governments, politicians, and policies. Just a thought…

* * *

Several other miscellaneous quotes and episodes struck me as noteworthy:

In the German propaganda section, the images of the noble German worker bore a striking resemblance to the images of the “New Jew” of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. There is some kind of common thread of nationalism and rebirth that runs through both…

Tuvia Bielski, a partisan, said, “Don’t rush to fight and die… We need to save lives. It is more important to save Jews than to kill Germans.”

Imre Bathory, a Righteous Gentile from Hungary, said, “I know that when I stand before God on Judgment Day, I will not be asked the question posed to Cain – where were you when your brother’s blood was crying out to God?”

Father Hubert Celis, who together with his brother Father Louis helped hide a Jewish family’s children during the war, said, “I have always preferred a good Jew to a bad Christian.”

Moussa Abadi, a Damascus Jew, was teaching at a Catholic theological seminary in occupied France. With the help of Monsignor Paul Remond, Bishop of Nice, Abadi worked within the network of Catholic seminaries and institutions to hide Jewish children from the Vichy regime, saving more than 500 lives. We need to lift up these extraordinary examples of interfaith cooperation! Especially when the Pope basically stood idly by…

In a series of pictures of German troops' occupying various countries in Europe, one in particular caught my eye: an April 1941 shot of German troops raising a Nazi flag on the Acropolis in Athens, with the Parthenon in the background. Because of the novelty of this image and my affinity for classical Greek culture and philosophy (Plato, to be precise), I felt like this was a desecration. These fascist brutes, staking a claim to the symbol of Athenian democracy’s zenith?!? Forgive me if I appear to be intellectualizing the tragedy of the Holocaust to a fault, but for someone like me, this image will have a lasting impact (and, anyway, I don't like to draw a hard line between the intellectual and the spiritual/emotional).

HUC in the Jerusalem Post

On October 23, 2005, the Jerusalem Post published an article by a friend of mine, Amanda Septimus, about HUC's Year-in-Israel program. She quoted me a few times. If you're interested, read on:

Learning Close to Home by Amanda Septimus

In 1963, the Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) opened a building on the Israeli-Jordanian border in Jerusalem. The institute was established partially to fulfill a promise that then president of HUC-JIR, Dr. Nelson Glueck, made to David Ben Gurion to bring all HUC-JIR rabbinical students to Jerusalem for a year of study. In 1970, the first Year-in-Israel program began with 35 rabbinical and education students from the North American Reform movement.

Today HUC-JIR's Jerusalem campus sits in a prime area of Jerusalem real-estate with a scenic view of the Old City and boasts over 100 rabbinical, cantorial, and Jewish education students - an unusually high number for the institute.

Among them are first year North American students, Israeli students and fourth year North American students who deferred their Year-in-Israel program in 2002-2003 due to what Director of the Year-in-Israel Program, Rabbi Naamah Kelman, described as "the year from hell" which witnessed the Moment Caf , Park Hotel and Hebrew University bombings.

In addition, there are fourth-year North American students who attended their first year in Israel but are taking the opportunity to return while their classmates are studying in Jerusalem.

The college's commitment to Israel is as strong as ever. According to Kelman, HUC-JIR is the only liberal seminary that requires rabbinical, cantorial, and Rhea Hirsch education students to spend one year in Israel before being ordained or graduating.

"We believe the journey to Jewish religious leadership is much more than an individual spiritual quest," explains President of HUC-JIR Rabbi David Ellenson.

"We call upon our graduates to recognize that they are part of a people, and that Jews throughout the world share a common destiny. The ideals of ahdut and areivut - Jewish solidarity and mutual responsibility - are the foundational components of education HUC-JIR provides for its students, and Israel constitutes the linchpin in this educational process of religious formation."

David Segal is a 24-year-old first-year rabbinical student from Houston, Texas. The Year-in-Israel program gives him an opportunity to explore the connection between Reform Judaism and Israel. Segal also hopes to explore various synagogues with diverse traditions to become well rounded in liturgy.

"I like Reform liturgy, but it is selective and I want to know what it is selected from." Although Segal feels like a visitor in Israel, he feels a connection with the country's history.

"The Year-in-Israel program is a reminder of an element of peoplehood that is easy to forget when living in Christian North America." Segal adds, "You do not have to love everything Israel does to be a Zionist."

All North American students are required to attend a weekly course on what Ellenson calls "yediat ha'aretz" that allows students to have a direct encounter with the land, its people and history. Ellenson considers this to be one of the most important aspects of the program.

Another learning experience which connects students to the country is a mandatory community service program that requires students to work with Israelis from different cultural backgrounds.

Volunteer opportunities include developing relationships with Ethiopian immigrants at Mevaseret Zion Absorption Center, tutoring underprivileged children in English at the Kol Haneshama Enrichment Program, serving food at the Carmei Ha'ir kitchen, and conducting research to advance religious freedom and pluralism at the Israel Religious Action Center.

Janice Elster is a fourth-year rabbinical student who did attend the Year-in-Israel program, along with around 40 classmates, during the trying year of 2002-2003. "When we were here (in 2002-2003), Israelis were so grateful. It made us feel like we were giving something small back when we volunteered." Elster felt that the volunteering and the weekly Israel seminar were two of the most valuable, insight-giving components of that year in Israel.

For the first time in HUC-JIR history, a curriculum has been set up this academic year for fourth-year students from North America who need to fulfill their required Year-in-Israel program.

Because of this, other fourth-year students who spent 2002-2003 in Israel were given the option to return and have an additional year of study in Israel. Six rabbinical students and three cantorial students have returned for this second study experience in Israel.

While Elster was studying in Israel during 2002-2003, she developed a deeper connection to prayer. She was moved as she recited prayers that mentioned Jerusalem while she viewed the old city from HUC-JIR's Jerusalem campus. She also learned about Israeli society through the political election that took place that year.

"I came back because I wanted to have more of these opportunities... During my first year, we were given gas masks during the war with Iraq. It was a difficult time, but we were here experiencing it with the people," Elster recalls.

"Israelis were not necessarily able to leave when times were hard, so I felt I needed to be here."

Justin Kerber is a fourth-year rabbinical student who deferred coming to Jerusalem in 2002-2003 for family reasons. He is thrilled and delighted to be in Israel. "There is no substitute for the worldview of this place," Kerber comments.

"We [Reform Jews] are not well known here and we have a lot to offer this country. Much of the public here is turned off by what they see as Judaism and they could find a connection to religion with exposure to liberal Judaism."

Kerber, a former lawyer who came to Israel with his wife, nine-month-old baby and small dog, says that the transition to life in Israel has been challenging and rewarding. The adjustment is worth it because he feels that in Israel he learns during every second of every day as opposed to only in the classroom back at his stateside campus of Cincinnati.

Hebrew immersion, text study, Israel experience, community building, and professional development are the five goals of the Year-in-Israel program according to Kelman. Community building will be especially unique this year while students at different points of their learning come together in Jerusalem before departing to three separate campuses in the US.

"The Jerusalem campus is at the intersection where East meets West and old meets new, which is what Reform Judaism is," explains Kelman.

"Reform Judaism has surely moved light years away from the anti-Zionist stance taken by the movement in the early years of the 20th century. Reform has now come to embrace Jewish peoplehood as a central value and sees the state of Israel as an optimal setting for realization of Jewish values and hopes," concludes Ellenson.

Fundamentalism and Forgiveness

I have been struggling with a number of intellectual and spiritual issues over the last several weeks, and, as is often the case with Torah, I found inspiration and answers within Scripture... I delivered a d'var Torah this morning on Parashat Nitzavim, and I submit it to you as this week's blog entry.

You can read it online or download the PDF.

As always, feedback is welcome.

"Love the convert..."

A couple weeks ago, in Parashat Eikev, we saw God's commandment to the Israelites: "You shall love the stranger..." (Deuteronomy 10:19). One interpretation of this verse takes it as the foundation of the mitzvah of welcoming the convert. A Hebrew Union College 4th-year rabbinic student, Justus Baird, delivered a beautiful and moving d'var torah on this topic at the Wexner Summer Institute at the end of August. It is a must-read sermon, and I hope you find it as moving and inspiring as I did.

how to subscribe

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Holy Limericks, continued (#2)

I wrote a second in my series of limericks last week. It was inspired by the words of Cantor Eli Schleifer, head of the School of Sacred Music here at HUC Jerusalem. During services one morning, he employed a fitting musical metaphor to express the relationship between innovation and tradition, and the value of both:

The psalmist says: "Sing a new song";
And we do, for it makes us belong.
This can cause some anxiety,
Even verge on impiety.
But forgetting the old -- that's what's wrong.

on the limits of leadership...

Tonight I leave for my first Wexner Graduate Fellowship institute, which means flying from Jerusalem tonight (through Newark) to Stowe, Vermont. We'll spend five days in the mountains together, praying, learning, thinking, arguing, and building community (which is really just another way of saying the first four things, right?).

This posting is short because I haven't quite finished packing.... But please take a moment to read the d'var Torah I am giving on Monday morning to my class (XVIII) of Wexner fellows.

Drop me a line and let me know what you think, too -- these things should always be the beginning of a conversation, not the end!

Shabbat shalom and shavua tov,
David

Alien grief?

Tisha B'Av begins tonight, when we mourn and mark the destruction of the Temple. In fact, the first nine days of Av are to be a mourning period; many Jews refrain from eating meat and from celebrations of any kind during this period.

This is complicated for me for a few reasons, one descriptive and two normative:

1) I grew up with no real understanding of Tisha B'Av. We didn't observe it in my synagogue or family, and it has never been a part of my Jewish identity.

2) I cannot see the destruction of the Temple as an unmitigated tragedy. It is, in some sense, a "mixed curse". For it was that destruction that allowed (facilitated, even?) the transformation of Judaism into a rabbinic religion that could flourish in the Diaspora. I am a product of this diaspora Judaism. Hence, my American Jewish experience and identity is thanks to, traced back far enough, the destruction of the Temple.

3) I do not yearn for the rebuilding of the Temple and the return to Temple worship practices.

Quite insightfully, a classmate of mine suggested last night that mourning for something does not necessarily imply yearning for its return. Mourning, rather, involves learning to live with loss. On that reading, the past 2000ish years of Jewish life would seem to attest to a successful mourning process, i.e. learning to live with the loss of the Temple.

Perhaps it is appropriate on Tisha B'Av to mourn the loss of a naive conception of a perfect Israel. The early Zionists dreamed of a land without a people for a people without a land, an Israel living in harmony with her neighbors, an Israel where discrimination and oppression were buried with the ashes of the Holocaust. It is (well past) time to mourn for that dream -- not to yearn for its complete return -- and in mourning to prepare ourselves to live with and address reality.


p.s. Some pictures in the Old City, including a day at the Temple Mount

Holy Limericks

In the early 17th Century, John Donne wrote a cycle of 19 Holy Sonnets (which I cannot recommend highly enough!) about his relationship to God, Christianity, and the world. Desiring to emulate his pious poetic project (though about Judaism, of course, in my case), but finding the sonnet too lengthy and inaccessible for our (post)modern sensibilities, I am undertaking to create a cycle of Holy Limericks: bite-size doses of religious pith. Here is the first, which came to me in the wake of a stimulating class discussion about the relationship between autonomy, obligation, law, Torah, mitzvot, and community.

If your sense of self-rule should feel frozen,
And the fence around Torah should close in;
If you find that the Law
Should get stuck in your craw,
Then consider: you choose to be Chosen.

visiting East Jerusalem

29 July 2005, Friday:

Friday morning I went on a tour of East Jerusalem with a representative of the Israel Committee Against Home Demolitions. He led a group of about 10 of us into several neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to give us an idea of the lay of the land and to see how big issues of territorial rights play out on the local level.

For the first time, I saw this separation barrier that I’ve heard so much about (and argued a bit about). In some places, it’s a kind of chain link fence. In others, it’s a series of giant concrete slabs. I suggest looking at my photos to get a better idea.

We spoke to several peace activists, including a Palestinian Jerusalemite woman who’s neighborhood was cut in two by the barrier. The night before, her husband hadn’t come home because he couldn’t get through the checkpoint from the West Bank side. She explained that the barrier had cut off about 50,000+ Arab former Jerusalemites from the hospitals, schools, and shopping areas they had frequented before last year. In addition, the army had commandeered her cousin’s family’s hotel, which was right across the street from her house. So what had been a beautiful, quiet neighborhood became a kind of militarized border crossing. Interestingly, she pointed out that it isn’t accurate to refer to the barrier as an “Apartheid Wall” (as some activists do) because it separates Palestinians from Palestinians. Problematic for other reasons, of course.

Next we went to see a checkpoint in action (though from a safe distance): Israeli soldiers deciding who could come through from the West Bank side. At one point, an old Arab woman carrying a 1-yr-old approached us and started speaking very emotionally. Luckily, we had some Arabic speakers in our group, who gathered that she was the grandmother of the boy, whose mother was stuck on the other side of the checkpoint. She wanted us to help by talking to the soldiers. A few of the group members decided to give it a try; I must admit, it felt wrong to me. As sympathetic as I am to her plight, and as left-leaning as I am on the political situation in general, I don’t think it’s my place as an American tourist/student to interfere with Israeli defense/security operations. An argument could be made that, in the case of a gross violation of human rights, it’s every compassionate human being’s duty to get involved. I guess I feel like this situation is more complicated, and, again, it just felt wrong to go distract a group of Israeli soldiers who are manning their post. Joe, our group leader, called an Israeli feminist / legal action group who takes on these kinds of cases regularly; he told them about the case and asked them to get involved, since they have expertise and experience in this kind of thing.

After that we visited a few “suburbs” of Jerusalem, one of which (Maale Adumim) was established by a group of American religious Zionists in the '70s and then encouraged to expand (with the help of Sharon and others) in the '80s. It’s now a thriving planned community on the edge of the Judean desert, and you can see the mountains of Jordan in the distance. Settlements like these make the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank much more complicated, if not impossible. They also expand the de facto border of greater Jerusalem well past the Green Line (1949).

Finally, we visited the house of a Palestinian family who had seen it demolished by the Israeli military 4 times. With the help of an international group of activist volunteers, they were rebuilding it as a peace center (which has a different permit status and is thereby likely to escape the fate of its predecessors). The father of the family spoke to us about his experience, and the strong show of support and help from a group of Palestinian and Israeli volunteers and activists. I realize his role wasn’t to provide a complex political commentary, but he stated, “Israel can end the occupation tomorrow, if it decides. Then everything will be ok.” Yes, I take this out of context; and yes, his actual view is probably more nuanced; but there was too much reductionism, not to mention one-sided attribution of responsibility for the painful situation.

I wish I had a sweeping, incisive conclusion for you. I was mostly struck by the complexity of the situation. And the fact that left-wing and right-wing activists fall into the same trap of living one narrative so intensely that they are blind to certain other realities. Of course I want the occupation to end; but it is naïve and destructive to think that Israel can simply decide to pull out and all will be well. On the other hand, there are still efforts being made to expand settlements and compromise Palestinian territorial contiguity. As if to necessitate a smaller and smaller Palestinian state, when that finally does become a reality. Both sides have radical elements who have made extremely messy beds, and they all have to sleep in it together.

Israel seminar: exploring the City of David

28 July 2005, Thursday:

We had our first Jerusalem orientation “field seminar”, in which we explored biblical references to the land (and particularly to Jerusalem). Starting at the Tayelet overlooking the old city, we then visited the City of David. This is the original settlement that David conquered around 1000 BCE, in a valley below what became the Temple Mount. There's now an Arab neighborhood in this valley. We ended by walking 600m underground through Hezekiah’s tunnel underneath the City of David – it was pitch black and the water came up to our knees. It's an aquifer that predates Rome's elaborate water system by about 500 years.
Fun was had by all. I took a few photos.

We looked at a number of problematic and/or contradictory texts from the Tanakh, regarding Jerusalem and the monarchy of David and Solomon.

For example: Genesis 14:1-24
After Abraham conquers the invaders of Sodom (and thus wins back his nephew Lot from captivity), he returns to receive the blessings of the King of Sodom, as well as King Melchitzedek of Salem (i.e. Jerusalem). Strangely, the text says that “Melchitzedek brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High.” Why is this strange? Because it doesn’t make sense that there was a priest of God Most High who somehow predated Abraham: a) the priesthood certainly hadn’t been established yet, and b) the Israelites descended from Abraham, so who was this other guy? The rabbis asked these questions, and some suggested that Melchitzedek was Noah’s son Shem (the good son). In the end, there are two main ways of reading this anachronistic mention of a priest of God Most High operating in Jerusalem:

1. It is the editor’s way of demonstrating the eternity of Jerusalem as a holy site. It is intentionally “achronological” because the holiness of Jerusalem exists outside of time.
2. It is a retrospective political insertion to establish Jerusalem as the center of Jewish religious and even political authority.

No answers, just suggestions…

Another example: Who killed Goliath?
David, of course…or so the popular assumption goes. That story comes from I Samuel 17:25-51. However, take a look at II Samuel 21:18-22 and I Chronicles 20:4-7. Another Philistine giant mentioned, but no mention of David (except in the general terms of the house of David). Here, Jonathan son of Shimei (David’s nephew), slays the giant. Hmm…

One last example for now: The conquest of Jerusalem
Who did it, and when? Consider:

1. Joshua 15:63 – the Judaites could not dispossess the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Judaites dwell with the Jebusites in Jerusalem to this day.
2. Judges 1:8-11 – the Judaites attacked Jerusalem and captured it…
3. Judges 1:19-21 – The Benjaminites did not dispossess the Jebusite inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have dwelt with the Benjaminites in Jerusalem to this day.

So wait a second, who conquered/lived in Jerusalem?! It’s kind of unclear. There’s clearly evidence of some tribal insertions (i.e. Judah vs. Benjamin), but who knows what "really" happened. It's probably safe to say there was some kind of battle...

I’m constantly reminded: claiming to read the Bible literally is deeply problematic and inherently inconsistent…

"Religious liberal" is NOT an oxymoron!

A few days ago I set out to explore a bit of the Old City with a couple classmates. They advise that one dress modestly when visiting those areas so as not to "disturb the peace" or draw undue attention to oneself. This is, of course, especially important for women.

So, for various reasons, I was wearing a kipah (skullcap), which I otherwise would only wear during organized prayer. In addition, I had a blue and white ribbon tied to my backpack, representing a political position that can be described as something like "Pro-Disengagement and Pro-Israel." In Jerusalem, orange ribbons are more common; they represent opposition to the Disengagement from Gaza. As far as Israelis are concerned, there seems to be a general correlation between whether you're religious/secular and whether you sport an orange/blue&white ribbon.

Back to a few days ago: While I was on my way to meet my friends and walk to the Old City, a secular Israeli man in his early 40s said to me (in Hebrew, of course): "That's very nice -- the kipah with the blue and white." What he meant, of course, was that he was happy to see someone wearing the telltale sign of a religious Jew (a kipah) and simultaneously supporting the more "liberal" political position in favor of disengaging from Gaza.

That moment really captured what is going on here religiously and politically. The Reform Movement is a giant in North America, where we take it for granted that it represents the largest segment of American Jewry. In Israel, most view liberal religion as at best an oddity and at worst a joke. You're either secular or Orthodox. And even many secular Israelis have little respect for the Reform Movement; surely there's a note of irony when non-observant Jews criticize Reform Judaism for not being real Judaism. They don't want religion, but if you're going to be religious, the only legitimate option is orthodoxy.

So there's this very weird tension within which the middle gets squeezed. The Israeli Reform Movement (including HUC-Israel) is doing great work here, building the movement and ordaining more Israeli Reform rabbis than ever. But there's still much more to be done, even just in changing the Israeli mind about what it means to be a religious Jew.

I think there's a similar problem in America too, and it was probably obvious to anyone who wasn't living in a cave during the 2004 presidential campaign. There seems to be a tacit popular orthodoxy in both our countries that only fundamentalists (or conservatives) are serious religionists. This is yet another reason I'm pursuing this line of work -- to subvert that dangerous and mistaken notion. That's what the Israeli man on the street was reacting to -- the shattering of his stereotypes about what it means to be religious. That may be reason enough for me to start wearing a kipah regularly...

If I may sum up all too soon, and at the risk of oversimplifying... In truth, the truly religious individual should be not merely liberal, but radical. If your allegiance is to God above any earthly ruler, if your commitment is to your fellow human before any monied interest, if you value morality and truth over expediency and good press -- then you may not be the best politician, to be sure, but you will be eager to challenge your government radically and act to effect political change. Go read the Prophets (Jeremiah and Micah are two of my favorites) and you'll get an acute sense of what a committed religious liberal might look like.


"The church is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state." ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Yerushalayim shel zahav" ... v'zifzif

"Jerusalem of gold" ... and gravel

30 June 2005:
I arrived in Jerusalem early on a Thursday morning and headed to HUC to pick up my apartment key. Throughout the move-in process, things were pretty much as you'd expect from a move. Except that I was doing all of it IN JERUSALEM for pete's sake. It seemed strange to me, at first, that I was here in this holiest of cities occupied not so much by transcendental religious experiences as by being on hold with the cable internet company. And I had to buy towels and cleaning supplies. And do laundry. And set up vonage. In Jerusalem.

I was confused when I first saw a homeless person on the street here. It was jarring:
"A homeless person, in this city?!? Poverty, here? Impossible." Very possible indeed, and fairly prevalent.

This was my first lesson about Jerusalem: it is a real city, with real people, and replete with real problems. Interesting, then, that the Jewish tradition idealizes (and idolizes?) Jerusalem to such a degree, going so far as to describe it as an earthly Eden. But even while idealizing, it acknowledges.

I think Judaism has an ethos of embracing a vision of the ideal while being immersed in the everyday. Our tradition is very good at creating holiness in unexpected mundane places. "God was in this place and I did not know it...." (See also Leviticus and Numbers for some idea of what I mean....)

But how does this apply to Jerusalem, exactly? For the beginning of an answer, let us turn, as we often do, to the words of Heschel (both AJ and Susannah), from his book (and her introduction to) Israel: An Echo of Eternity (1969):

• The Land itself is not holy ... but is the site for holiness to be created.
• God is not dwelling any more in Israel than anywhere else....
• We do not worship the soil.
• The vision of Israel that emerges from this book is a challenge, not a panacea. Israel is a measure of moral fiber, a demand that "justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding." The State of Israel is not a gift to the Jews, nor an achievement on their part, but a test of the integrity of the Jewish people and the competence of Judaism.

A little Heschel, and it all starts to make some sense.
Of course this isn't God's kingdom on earth. Of course there's poverty here. Of course there are mundane errands to run, and the vagaries of everyday life preoccupy our thoughts. The challenge here -- as everywhere, though perhaps it's more exaggerated in the City of David -- is to see (and, when possible, create) the sacred within the profane.

Now, when I figure out exactly how to do that, I'll be sure to blog about it. For now, I'll just leave you with the suggestion that it involves a combination of prayer, study, and action. I invite you to add your own $0.02 on this topic; please leave a comment below.



...the Holy Land is wholly land...

Welcome

I am a first-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and this is my blog. I'll use it to post reflections on my experiences here. And maybe someone will read it.

For now, I commend you to the photographs I've taken here since my arrival on June 30th.