Category: Op-Ed

“The matzav” in Israel

Gaza, July 28, 2014: An Israel Defence Forces soldier examines a newly revealed tunnel in the Gaza strip. (photo by IDF via Ashernet)

It’s been awhile since I’ve written. There’s a story I’ve been meaning to share but, unfortunately, circumstances have led me to write a different story entirely, about “the matzav.”

“The matzav” means, literally, “the situation,” but it’s used to refer euphemistically to a current bad security situation in Israel. You say it in a half whisper, the way our parents used to say, “cancer.”

“How’s business going now, with – the matzav?”

“We’re going up north for a few days because of – the matzav.”

“My mother-in-law has been with us for two weeks, thanks to – the matzav.”

It’s definitely not an easy time to be in Israel, though now, more than ever, there is no place I would rather be.

I didn’t grow up in a particularly Zionist household. Most of what I know about Judaism and Israel I learned in college. People used to say to me that being in Israel is like being with family, and making aliyah is like coming home. My family never shoved in front of me to get on buses or overcharged me for souvenirs, so I guess I just couldn’t relate.

I got a little taste of the family thing when I was visiting Israel 12 years ago on a mission during the Second Intifada, when tourism was at an all-time low. I went to the falafel stand in the Old City by the Cardo with my 10-month-old son. There were no other tourists to be found. The owner, who was usually just interested in taking orders and keeping the line moving, insisted on holding the baby while I ate. This was like my family – not always warm and fuzzy, but there for you in hard times.

These are hard times. There’s been a constant barrage of rockets in southern Israel for weeks, keeping the population within 15 seconds of a bomb shelter. As I wrote these words, four people were killed by a rocket fired from a playground in Gaza. This morning, a man on the radio was saying that he’s terrified to shower or even go to the bathroom for fear a siren will go off.

Another woman was asleep and didn’t hear a siren. She only heard the rocket hit her house. She is being treated in the hospital for wounds to the head, legs and knees, but no treatment will cure the fear you can hear in her voice, unable to speak in full sentences.

On the other side of the border, the suffering in indescribable and the media images haunting. I feel torn apart by my pain for the Palestinian losses on the one hand and the need for us to defend ourselves on the other. Then there’s the sadness for the soldiers who are trained to minimize civilian casualties, but who find themselves hurting innocent civilians, behind whom the cowardly terrorists hide.

Our “adopted” lone soldier Danna tells us stories of what her friends see who are serving in Gaza – hospitals and UN schools hiding weapons and terrorists; gunmen literally hiding behind families; terrorists shooting with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.

As Golda Meir said to Anwar Sadat just before the peace talks with Egypt, “We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.”

Before the war started, I got a call one Friday afternoon.

“Hi, Emily. We’re thinking of cancelling the partnership minyan this week, but I just want to check with you, because I know you worked hard on your speech.”

“Oh, well, sure … but why?”

“We just thought it would be better for the whole community to pray together tonight because of, you know – the matzav.” (Pause) “Did you not here what happened?”

That’s how I heard about the three kidnapped soldiers.

You would think all three of them were from our kibbutz, the way people spoke of them and cried and prayed for them and organized around helping their families. The whole country was suddenly one big family. One big, sad family.

At school, the teachers held special meetings with their pupils to help them digest the news and share their feelings. They had a meeting in the evening to help parents with how to talk to their kids. All this despite the fact that the three boys were from a different part of the country and not at all connected to our school or our region, except that here everyone is connected. At these times, we’re all cousins, brothers, sons.

The news a few weeks later – that the boys were killed – hit hard. I was out for the day to Beit Shean with my son Abaye to get braces on his teeth. Abaye is very sensitive to “the matzav” and I try to keep him away from the news most of the time so we can share things with him in our own way, but there was no escape. The news was on in the dentist’s office, and staff and patients were openly crying. Afterwards, we went for ice cream and the ice cream shop was playing the tape over and over again. Everyone’s eyes were glued to the screen.

“You’re an ice cream shop!” I wanted to yell at them, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole country was in mourning.

Then the rockets started in the south. Everyone’s hearts turned to the families under fire. Our kibbutz Google group filled up with suggestions of where you could bring food and supplies, requests to run programs, and even invitations to drive down south into the fire to help entertain kids in bomb shelters. There were so many projects being run out of so many places that volunteers had to quickly set up a committee to manage them all.

Our area happens to be one of the safest parts of the country. We haven’t heard any sirens. We haven’t even unlocked our bomb shelters. So, everyone is opening their homes.

Several families have come to our kibbutz for a break, and our youth group organized a camp for a week with peers from a kibbutz in the south. I heard on the radio about a resort nearby that has opened its doors to another kibbutz (200 people!), feeding and housing them and running programs for the kids. And these are just a few tiny examples. Every community is doing something.

Then there are the troops fighting in Gaza.

photo - Tel Aviv, July 29, 2014: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the press conference announcing an extension of the Gaza operation
Tel Aviv, July 29, 2014: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the press conference announcing an extension of the Gaza operation. (photo by Ashernet)

Soldiers were sent to the border to defend our country from rocket attacks. Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to stave off a ground incursion, but the rockets kept falling and, it seems, there was work that could only be done on the ground.

When the army finally went in, they discovered a complex underground tunnel network that Hamas had built to infiltrate Israel. It seems they were planning a massive operation for the upcoming Rosh Hashanah – hundreds of terrorists were scheduled to appear from nowhere in kibbutzim and villages across the south, dressed in Israeli uniforms, for a mega terrorist attack. It’s chilling to think about what they might have done.

Several of the fatalities of this war, including the three kidnapped boys, have resulted from terrorists coming through these tunnels. They lead from private homes in Gaza right into Israeli neighborhoods, one ending directly beneath the dining hall of a kibbutz. It was reported that children on the kibbutz had been complaining they could hear someone digging under them, but adults hadn’t taken them seriously, because how could that possibly be?

So, now we are at war in Gaza until we get rid of the tunnels, of which 30 have been discovered so far, and many destroyed. Meanwhile, the number of fallen and wounded soldiers continues to rise, as well as, of course, the massive toll on both terrorist and innocent Gazans.

But I wanted to tell you about the efforts to support our troops.

Being the army of the Jewish people, the aid started with, of course, food. Fresh meals, cakes and treats – you name them. A renowned chef opened shop to provide gourmet cuisine for the soldiers.

At one point, we got the message that it’s enough food, and now could we please send personal hygiene products (soaps, deodorants, etc.) and “fresh towels with the scent of home”? In addition, children sent so many letters of love and support that the soldiers use them to wallpaper their tanks and living spaces. At the camp for Adin, my nine-year-old son, they changed the program this week so that every day was a different activity to support the soldiers – making gifts, preparing food and raising money.

And, of course, it’s difficult for soldiers to communicate with their families, so the radio has taken to running extra programs in which they can send personal messages.

“Hi Mom, Dad and, of course, my girlfriend Tal. I’m here to protect you and I’m fine, so you can sleep without worrying. I love you.”

And I’m sure Mom, Dad, Tal and half the country are crying with me.

Among the first losses of the war, we heard about the falling of two lone soldiers – people like our “adopted” daughter, who moved to Israel voluntarily to protect our country, who are here with no family. It made me sad to think these people would be buried alone, but what could anyone do? Their whole family is overseas.

A photo of one of these fallen boys, Sean Carmeli from Texas, appeared on the news in a Maccabee-Haifa soccer T-shirt. They were his favorite team. The team apparently shared my concern and made an appeal for people to attend his funeral. Twenty thousand people showed up!

You could call it a social media ploy, but I don’t think so. The next day, there was a funeral for the other lone soldier, Max Steinberg from California. I was afraid his funeral would pale in comparison to Sean’s, seeing as he wasn’t a major sports fan. But my fear was baseless. Thirty thousand people were in attendance. Those who were interviewed about why they came simply said that he made the ultimate sacrifice for them when he didn’t need to, and it was the least they could do.

Max’s family had never been to Israel before. I thought about my own mother, who did not want us to make aliyah, and who would never forgive me if, God forbid, anything happened to any of my kids. Max’s parents and siblings were overwhelmed by the turnout.

His mother Evie told the mourners, “We now know why Max fell in love with Israel. It was all because of its people. He was embraced with open arms and treated like family,” she said, “and, for that, we are eternally grateful.”

When his sister began, “We come from a very small family,” I held my breath expecting to hear her anger or sadness at having lost her brother. Instead, she continued, “But that seemed to quickly change after meeting people in Israel, who made it feel like one big family.”

This morning, I was out walking in the forest around the kibbutz when a new song came on the radio by Ariel Horowitz, son of one of Israel’s greatest singers, Naomi Shemer. The song is about the lone soldier Sean Carmeli. The writer had attended the funeral and was deeply moved. The chorus goes something like this:

20,000 people and you’re at the front.
20,00 people are behind you, Sean.
Marching in silence with flowers,
Two sisters and 20,000 brothers.

Sgt. Nissim Sean Carmeli and Sgt. Max Steinberg, and all our fallen soldiers will never be forgotten, because we don’t forget family.

Emily Singer is a teacher, social worker and freelance writer. Singer and her husband, Ross, were rebbetzin and rabbi of Vancouver’s Shaarey Tefilah congregation until 2004. The Singers spent two years in Jerusalem and then moved to Baltimore, Md., where Ross was rabbi at Congregation Beth Tfiloh and Emily taught Judaic studies at Beth Tfiloh High School, until they moved to Israel in 2010. They have four children, and live on Kibbutz Maale Gilboa.

Remembering Reb Zalman

I was 15 during the summer of 1962 when a visiting Lubavitcher rabbi named Zalman Schachter came to Camp Ramah. He sang his soft and expressive melody for the first blessing of the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals), which I remember to this day. It was the first time this yeshivah boy had experienced a different way of giving thanks for the gift of nourishing food, one that focused on the Source of the food. In a sense, I became his chassid that summer, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Six years later, while visiting a friend in Boston, we attended Shabbat services at Havurat Shalom and I moved closer to knowing that I was his chassid when I heard him sing “Eyl Adon,” the Shabbat poem in praise of the many realms of light, to the Yiddish folksong “Donna Donna.” And, four years after that, searching for a spiritual practice that affirmed the first 25 years of my life, and immersion in Jewish practice and study, I wrote him from the B.C. Interior and asked to learn with him, consciously becoming his chassid.

Reb Zalman always said that a chassid must have a rebbe and one becomes a rebbe only when one has a chassid. When he asked me if I would accept semichah (ordination) from him, we created new possibilities for others with what has become the movement for the spiritual renewal of Judaism and a current ordination program of 80 students. He offered me a semichah that I could accept and, as he put it, I gave him permission to begin a lineage which is both new and old.

On July, 3, 2014, I was teaching at our Semichah Week summer gathering at a retreat centre outside of Portland, when one of our students opened the door to my classroom. After waiting politely for a break in the conversation, he said that he had the sad duty of informing us that our beloved rebbe had peacefully passed into the next world that morning. Supported by my students and dear friends, together we affirmed Reb Zalman’s death with the traditional words, “Baruch Dayan HaEmet (Blessed be the True Judge).”

Memories and images passed before me, arising from the years of learning and friendship that we had shared. In the summer of 1971, my life partner, Hanna Tiferet, and I immigrated to British Columbia and settled in the Kootenays. It was a year of living in harmony with the earth and seeking spiritual meaning. Our first son, Noah, was born the following summer, after our house burned down. I had written Zalman for spiritual guidance. He was living in Winnipeg at the time and teaching at the University of Manitoba. He invited me to come to Winnipeg. After Hanna and Noah were settled, I hitchhiked 1,500 miles there and back to officially meet and begin my studies with my rebbe.

In 1976-77, Hanna and I lived in Philadelphia with Reb Zalman, learning how the rebbe “tied his shoelaces.” Mordecai and Hana Wosk visited him that year and they encouraged me to apply for both the University of British Columbia Hillel director position and to become Congregation Beth Tikvah’s first rabbi. This provided the opportunity for us to bring this new-old form of Judaism to a place we loved in a country where I, as the son of a Toronto-born Jewish pioneer, felt at home.

Inspired by the havurah movement and Reb Zalman’s mystical teachings, we slowly gathered people to form the Hillel Minyan, which became “The Minyan,” then Havurat Sim Shalom, which is now Or Shalom. I served the Vancouver Jewish community for 10 years and then went back to the United States to work as the rabbi at Dartmouth College. After another 10 years, we settled in Boston, where I became the director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and, eventually, a teacher in the rabbinic program. Reb Zalman’s teachings became my life’s work and I worked closely with him to translate and transcribe his thought in several books and manuals, including Credo of a Modern Kabbalist, The Kabbalah of Tikkun Olam, Renewal Is Judaism Now, and Integral Halachah.

Reb Zalman revealed to us a Judaism that is open and inclusive. He said that, once we were witness to the profound image of the earth from outer space, we could begin to comprehend the oneness of all life beyond the limitations of national borders. How could we then separate the fate of the Jewish people from that of all people, or the fate of humanity from the condition of all of life on this planet? He taught about deep ecumenism and showed us how to relate to Christians, Muslims, Hindus and First Nations people, embracing and respecting the holiness in each tradition. His mission was to maintain the integrity of Klal Yisrael while also embracing the shared truth in all the spiritual and ethical paths present in our world. Inspired by him, we opened spiritual leadership to women, created services that others could help lead as they developed their skills, designed tallitot that were colorful and beautiful, included gays and lesbians and then all the wonderful and various expressions of identity in our growing communities.

Reb Zalman, together with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, had a spiritual assignment to redeem the Jewish people after the Holocaust. These two shlichim (messengers) from Chabad revitalized Judaism and sparked the renewal of spirituality in every facet of Jewish life.

When I received and accepted semichah from Reb Zalman in 1974 in the Winnipeg home of Rabbi Neal and Carol Rose, I was the first and only member of this new lineage. Now, there are more than 100 ordained as a Renewal rabbi, chazzan or rabbinic pastor, and students keep arriving, though we don’t advertise or recruit. Meditation, retreats, ecstatic prayer, new music, poetry, art and movement are now available options everywhere that Jews gather to pray. So much of this results from the vision, intelligence and spiritual depth of this one man, whose life we celebrate and whose presence on this earth plane we will miss so deeply.

With gratitude for the blessing of his presence in my own life these past 52 years, I say my own Kaddish for my rebbe and spiritual father, Meshullam Zalman Chiyya ben Chayah Gittel v’Shlomo haKohen, z”l. May his memory be a blessing and awaken in us the deep desire to live in peace and harmony with all of creation.

Israel is my home, heart

I was caught completely off-guard by the question: “Don’t you sometimes long to run away from all this war and violence and madness and terrorism? You could always go back to Australia.”

This was when, like every other Israeli, and probably Jews around the world, I was listening to the news every hour, hoping that the three kidnapped boys would have been found, safe and unharmed. At that time, there was no news yet.

I looked at my friend, a tourist from my birthplace. I didn’t know how to answer her. Once I would have known. I would simply have said “yes,” and my eyes would have filled with tears of nostalgia for the comfortable lifestyle, the ordinariness of everyday living, of only bothering to listen to the news if I wanted a sporting result or the weather forecast; all the security – emotional, financial, physical – that I’d left behind when I made aliyah.

She was looking at me strangely and, I suppose, a lot of time must have passed since she asked me the question. To me, the answer had become extraordinarily complex. A simple “yes” or “no” would not suffice.

We were sitting on a park bench in Beit Hakerem, in Jerusalem, where I live. It was Sunday afternoon, and I’d looked at the scene before us hundreds of times without truly registering it. A little boy was walking his dog on a leash. A pretty girl was jogging, music from an electronic device giving her the beat and rhythm. A grandfather wheeled a baby carriage. A young couple sat near us sharing a falafel and looking into each other’s eyes. Nothing special. Nothing dramatic.

All the drama had been played out in the weeks and months and years before her visit. Down south in Gaza. Up north in Lebanon. Rockets from Syria. Weeks of needing to hear the news every hour. Years of watching funerals on TV of beautiful young soldiers and ordinary people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Making phone calls to ensure that grandsons in the army, involved in searching for the missing boys in Hebron, were safe.

How could you “run away” from all the things that had shaped your life for decades? Of course, you could leave, but you’d take all that caring and commitment with you. It would feel like an amputation, and you’d never be a whole person again.

Over the years, I’ve been back to Australia for holidays, but they were never successful visits for long. For a few days, I’d bask in the warmth of seeing family and friends, enjoying their attention and the luxury of their lives. But then, someone would make a thoughtless remark about Israel, and I would bristle at their lack of understanding and feel that I had to defend the country. I’d long to be back home in Jerusalem, where I could talk about, even criticize, the government and corrupt politicians, the lack of good manners and the insane Israeli drivers, because I’d be talking to people on the same wavelength. It was different, very different.

The familiar scene in the park suddenly became very dear to me. I didn’t know any of these people, but I loved them. They were my family. I hoped the young lovers would marry; that the grandfather would live to see the baby’s bar or bat mitzvah; that the little boy with the dog would never have to fight in a war.

Finally, I had my answer. “No, I don’t long to run away. It’s not easy, but we understand what all the sacrifice is about. And it’s home,” I added as an afterthought. And, after all, home is where the heart is.

Dvora Waysman is the author of 13 books. She has lived in Jerusalem for 43 years.

With respect to assisted suicide, context is everything

I am an oncologist, and I am Jewish. Fortunately, at this moment, I am not terminally ill, nor do I bear an incurable disease. By virtue of my profession and my age, death, suffering and the indignity that can go with it are familiar to me.

That is my perspective. I lead with that declaration because, when it comes to the business of assisted suicide, context is everything.

The rationale for actively ending a life is always posited on the basis of ending suffering and, hence, preserving dignity. At face value, this appears both straightforward and without controversy. It is not. Whose suffering? What is dignity, and is it realistic to provide some idealized form of dignity in every instance, try as we may? Who is to judge? When to decide, and when to act? Who is to act, and on what authority?

Some years ago, at a palliative-care conference in Israel, I was riveted by a panel where Anglican, Catholic and Jewish physicians discussed suffering. The ordained Anglican, a highly respected surgeon, spoke of the purifying nature of suffering and its role in preparing people for the afterlife. For him, the total relief of pain was at cross-purposes with the spiritual transit of the end of life. For me, as a Jew, this was a striking perspective, certainly far from my understanding that pain of this sort had little redeeming value. Lesson No. 1: Cultural context is important.

More recently, I was asked to see a young man dying of cancer, whose pain seemed uncontrollable. He was desperate to go home. The complex logistics of pain management and support appeared to make this impossible. What to do? We talked, initially rather guardedly, then more openly. It turned out that, more than anything else, he wanted to see his dog. That was why he wanted to go home, for the absence tormented him. We arranged for the dog to make a hospital visit. The pain went away. My patient died quite comfortably in his hospital bed a few days later. Lesson No. 2: Understand the pain; you may be able to relieve it.

Almost 30 years ago, a small group of Winnipeg cancer physicians asked what was then a heretical question: Are we treating cancer, independent of the patient, or are we treating a patient who happens to have cancer? We created the “quality of life” concept, and objective measures of it. What happened to the tumor became less important than what happened to the person – physically, emotionally, socially and functionally. We broadened our understanding of our patients, and so were born the diverse range of interventions and supports we now routinely employ to more than keep people alive. We help our patients live lives. Lesson No. 3: It’s about the person, not the disease.

“Assisted suicide” is a euphemism for ending someone else’s life. Every civilized society holds life sacred. The idea of “Thou shalt not kill” echoes in every faith. The penalties for killing are severe, mitigated by an understanding of intent. Whenever we introduce a legal exception, we run into trouble. Similar arguments about relieving suffering were used by the Nazis to justify first exterminating the weakened and disabled, then the mentally ill, and then non-Aryans on the regime’s hell-bent descent into depravity. In order to execute the policy, a cohort of licensed killers was created. This, in a society once considered the world’s most sophisticated and cultured. Lesson No. 4: Assisted suicide is not a legal matter, it’s a moral one, and we can’t legislate morality.

So, where does this bring me in the consideration of assisted suicide? Full circle, to my ancient role as physician. Not as medical technician, nor as the master of prognostic statistics, derived from groups somehow extrapolated to an individual. I am a member of the one profession whose essential role invokes individual life and death decisions, and acts on risks that necessarily include adverse outcomes causing pain and suffering and death. I’m not doing my job unless I understand context, cause and possibility when it comes to suffering. That takes time, patience and experience. The responsibility is a great harbinger of humility.

Each dying patient has their own context and belief frame for their “suffering.” Each case has its own mix of causes, and things that make it worse or better. My contention is that when we fully understand what’s going on, it is rare that suffering can’t be greatly palliated. It then follows that the perceived need to end life to alleviate suffering is a very rare occurrence.

In this most intimate and delicate interaction between patient and physician, the physician also has context and values. I don’t think they can be legislated away.

For me, as a Jew and as a physician, I can give morphine to relieve pain, but not to end a life. I come down against legalizing assisted suicide as a product of my faith, culture, training and experience. Put as a dichotomy, I’m prepared that a few might suffer more than they can bear, rather than countenance in the name of some kind of generosity of spirit the active taking of a life. I know from history, and I have seen too much of the slippery slope of convenience, to find confidence in any permissive legislative process.

Harvey Schipper is a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. This article originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

Bringing Judaism into the public sphere

A 28-year-old struggling writer walks up to a checkout counter at Whole Foods. “Where is the Torah study?” he asks. “Oh, the class with the rabbi? That’s in the back, near the nuts.”

The clerk wasn’t being pejorative – the Torah study really is in the back, near the bulk bins of nuts and trail mix. I should know: I’m the nut teaching Torah in the store every Wednesday.

In my 20-plus years as a Jewish educator, I never dreamt I’d be teaching Torah in a supermarket. But, then again, I’m pretty sure the two dozen or so students who regularly participate in the class never thought they’d be studying Jewish text each week, let alone doing so surrounded by organic Swiss chard.

There is nothing new in all this. When the Israelites returned from Babylonian exile in 537 BCE and rebuilt the Temple, Ezra the Scribe noticed that the people were too busy with the pressures of the day to make time for Judaism. On Mondays and Thursdays – the two busiest market days – Ezra stood in the street and read Torah out loud to a people who had all but forgotten their own story. From this seminal moment sprang the practice of reading the Torah on Mondays and Thursdays that continues in synagogues to this day.

Millennia later, public space Judaism is again an emerging trend. I began my own work in this field as a congregational rabbi at Temple Judea in Tarzana, Calif., inspired by Rabbi Kerry Olitzky’s teaching: “In a place where you can be Jewish anywhere, we should grasp the opportunity to be Jewish everywhere.”

Torah study at Whole Foods expanded to a host of Jewish events. On Sukkot, our youth group built a sukkah on Whole Foods’ outdoor patio, a banner explained the structure. We nurtured a mutually beneficial relationship with the store manager and staff, and the store sponsored food and activities at temple events. A year later, the relationship had solidified to the point that the store manager invited our congregation to lead a menorah lighting at Chanukah time. At that moment, I knew that we’d not only engaged Jews beyond our shul’s walls; we had changed the public face of Judaism in our community.

For Jewish communities like Vancouver that lack great Jewish population density, public space Judaism is a bit like online dating: if you want to meet someone, you need to let people know you’re looking.

Afterwards, the room was electric with everyone talking about how wonderful it was to connect with a larger Jewish community while on vacation and brainstorming how we might do this again.

How do we accomplish this? My colleague at Temple Sholom, Rabbi Carey Brown, teaches a Talmud class for millennials in a coffee shop once a month; I teach a text-based Jewish current events discussion at lunchtime in an office boardroom. Ringing in the 2014 year, we led a Shabbat service and Havdalah at Whistler Blackcomb. More than 60 people came to the dinner and service, about 45 to Havdalah. Afterwards, the room was electric with everyone talking about how wonderful it was to connect with a larger Jewish community while on vacation and brainstorming how we might do this again. A few local Jewish families asked if we could help educate their remote community. We now have plans to bring Hebrew school and family education to them.

When the rain and snow subside and the sun shines on Vancouver’s beaches, our congregation leads relaxing, open Shabbat services on the beach. We unfurl a banner and post signs welcoming all who wish to join us. And, like at Whole Foods, they come – Jews and “Jew curious.”

Howard Schultz, the man who developed Starbucks Coffee’s identity, famously explained his business model as trying to create a “third place” between work and home where people could gather and feel they belonged. For generations, the synagogue was that third place for Jews.

Like most rabbis, I have tried everything short of standing on my head to get people into my shul for prayer or study. While many come, some regularly, many others don’t or won’t. We can bring synagogue to them. We can meet in a third place of our own creation, filling it with meaning and a measure of Yiddishkeit.

One group in particular was easy to find but hard to reach: Jewish men. They were everywhere in our larger community, but not at synagogue. I asked a socially connected man in my Los Angeles congregation to host a Guys’ Night with the Rabbi in his home. I suggested he invite anyone he wanted and encourage guys to bring a friend.

To my surprise, 23 guys showed up. When we asked them why, they answered, “Because you asked.” Note that the “you” was not me, but the guy they respected and liked who had invited them to his home. Again, it was all about relationships.

We began that “Guys Night” with a simple but powerful exercise – introduce yourself without saying what you do for a living. Men so often define themselves by what they do, how they provide for their families. Our group would only work, we realized, if we could retrain ourselves to change this damaging, isolating pattern that is related to male competitiveness. We would have to see other men as brothers, each one with good things to give and to receive.

We established ground rules about confidentiality and cross talk. In the first months, we discussed Why Do We Work So Hard?; What Kind of Fathers We Had, What Kind of Fathers We Are; Being a Husband: How Has Your Partner Influenced the Way You Think?; Power and the Male Identity.

I always prepared a contemporary text and a Jewish text to help guide our talks, but soon we needed no more than a trigger to get started. The group of about 60 regulars has now met for eight years. Our annual retreat attracts more than 100 and there’s also an annual Community Men’s Seder, based on a Men of Reform Judaism model, that a core group of guys lead for friends and colleagues, which is growing every year. And many of the men who were once absent from synagogue life are now present.

Public space Judaism has taught me that, even in the congregational context, I need to reach out to members. If I wait for them to come to me, they might never come.

Public space Judaism has taught me that, even in the congregational context, I need to reach out to members. If I wait for them to come to me, they might never come. On my first day at Temple Sholom, for example, I was handed the Kaddish list for the coming Shabbat. I didn’t know any of the names, so I started calling members who were observing yahrzeits. Introducing myself, I explained that it would be my first time reading the name of their loved one. Could they tell me a little bit about the deceased, so I had a context for their memory as I read the name on Shabbat?

One by one, congregants told me their stories. They remembered things about their parents, spouses and siblings they hadn’t thought of in years. Tears flowed on both ends of the conversation. When the mourners came to synagogue that week to recite Kaddish, it was easier for them to walk into the place that had been made unfamiliar because of the change of rabbis, and easier for me to stand before them. We were no longer strangers.

Many of those talks also led to my visiting members’ homes or meeting them for coffee to hear their stories. Whenever possible, I set those meetings away from my office. Like Ezra the Scribe, I feel I need to engage the people in their space, not mine.

Yes, public space Judaism is a blind date, and that takes a bit of chutzpah. It begins with the sukkah, the phone call, the get-together at Whole Foods near the nut department. More often than we think, it leads to a relationship – a relationship with other Jews and with our Jewish selves that endures.

Rabbi Dan Moskovitz is senior rabbi at Temple Sholom and co-author of The MRJ Men’s Seder Haggadah (MRJ Press 2007). You can follow him on twitter @rabbidanmosk. A longer version of this article was originally published in Reform Judaism Magazine.

Lessons from debating an anti-Zionist

Mira Sucharov’s debate with Max Blumenthal is on CPAC.

In a previous blog post on haaretz.com, I discussed what appears to be an increasing chill factor in our Jewish communities. By way of example, I mentioned a then upcoming debate on the topic of whether Israel is and can be a “Jewish and democratic state” between prominent anti-Zionist Max Blumenthal and me, a liberal Zionist. Given the event sponsors (Independent Jewish Voices), many in the audience were primed for Blumenthal’s points – a scenario that makes supporters of Israel uneasy. But, unlike a “hasbarah” activist or a right-winger or even a centrist, we liberal Zionists tend to be both emotionally connected to Israel and critical of Israeli policies. So, on the heels of that event, here are some reflections on what happens when a liberal Zionist debates an anti-Zionist.

When it comes to Israeli democracy, liberal Zionists focus on what is possible. From the government actions of the day, anti-Zionists infer absolute limits.

There were times in the debate where, after I had addressed the central question, namely whether Israel’s Jewish and democratic character are mutually exclusive, Blumenthal would imply that we need to move away from pie-in-the-sky ideals and toward how things actually are. But, as with any experiment in nation building, I see Israel’s democracy as a work in progress. The contradictions need to be seen for what they are: temporary challenges to democracy, and requiring key legal reforms that Israel’s supporters and concerned citizens must continue to push for. Which brings me to my next point:

Read more at haaretz.com.

We must be able to engage in dialogue

While the conflict between Israel and Palestine plays out via an ever-ailing peace process, outside of the Middle East, the relationship is conducted by increasing attempts at silencing opponents. As far as I can tell, this silencing stems from great communal fear that Israel’s political and philosophical opponents pose a dire threat. But, given Israel’s secure military position and America’s unwavering support, something doesn’t quite add up. Let’s take a look at the political landscape.

The longer Israel and the Palestinians coexist in deadlock, the more critics of Israel are deepening their opposition to Israel’s core political identity. These Israel critics believe that saying that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, as Zionists proclaim, is an oxymoron. They believe, instead, that calling Israel a Jewish state denies the reality of its Palestinian minority, who comprise 20 percent of Israel’s citizens. They believe that Israel cannot deign to call itself a democracy while continuing the decades-long occupation. Neither do they believe that a democracy can allow unfettered Jewish immigration while denying the same rights to Palestinian refugees.

These critics of Israel believe that Israel is an apartheid state. Unlike Secretary of State John Kerry, who said privately (before publicly apologizing) that Israel is headed down an apartheid road unless it achieves a negotiated end to the conflict, these critics believe that Israel is already there.

Because of my vocal liberal Zionist position, I have been among the targets of these critics. I summed up this dynamic in my final piece for the Daily Beast’s Open Zion blog, a piece I called “No one loves a liberal Zionist.” In a short piece last year, one commentator, writing on the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss, even compared my call for a two-state solution to Jim Crow-era-style segregationist manifestos.

Those familiar with my writings know that while I am frequently critical of Israeli policies, I still believe that Israel can be saved from itself. Ending the occupation and enacting legal reform to address disparities between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens will enable Israel to retain its core identity of being both Jewish and democratic.

“I work on the assumption that true friendship involves holding up a mirror to the face of one’s friend. Helping Israel end the occupation is, therefore, a moral imperative for the Diaspora Jewish community.”

Readers of the Independent may associate my column more with criticism than with defence of Israel. It is true that I typically use this forum to encourage our community to consider how we can help Israel emerge from the tragic conundrum it has found itself. I work on the assumption that true friendship involves holding up a mirror to the face of one’s friend. Helping Israel end the occupation is, therefore, a moral imperative for the Diaspora Jewish community.

Unlike those on the far left, though, I believe that without prejudicing the lives of citizens within a given state, every country has the right to define its identity as it sees fit. And as a Jew who was raised with Zionist narratives and feels a deep emotional connection to Israel, I admit a certain subjective attachment to the idea of maintaining a Jewish and democratic state.

Given all this complexity, and the need to dialogue and engage more than ever, I am concerned that a chill factor is setting into our communities. This silencing is painted with a broad brush. David Harris-Gershon, author of the excellent book What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, was disinvited in February from giving a book talk at the Washington, D.C., Jewish community centre. And, as campus Hillels have made headlines for imposing strict bans on who may share a podium (those who, according to the guidelines, seek to “delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel”), some colleges, like Swarthmore and Vassar, have signaled their opposition to this silencing, declaring theirs an “Open Hillel.”

Every time I hear about another instance of the community seeking to police discourse that falls within the bounds of civil, if impassioned or provocative debate, I think this: if we cannot engage in dialogue with those with whom we disagree politically – assuming basic standards of decency are being respected (meaning no hate, no racism, no Islamophobia and no antisemitism), then what do we, as human beings, have left?

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. This article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

Trepidation of the world

“Therefore, the Lord, blessed be He, decreed that we count these days in order that we remember the trepidation of the world.”

– Rabbi Moses ben Abraham of Premysl

We count 50 days between Passover and Shavuot, officially called the Omer. Traditionally, this is regarded as a time of mourning because of the infighting and death of thousands of students in the talmudic era and the fact that the Omer sacrifice, which was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem on Shavuot, could not be given once the Temple was destroyed.

The Omer, however, originated as a biblical concept before there was an actual Temple or any rabbinic scholars: “You shall count from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you bring the sheaf of the wave offering [the Omer] … you shall count 50 days until the day after the seventh week; then you shall present a wheat offering of new grain … as first fruits to the Lord.” (Leviticus 23:15-17)

Spring naturally gets our attention as the weather and the plant life around us change. If we were farmers, we would be even more cognizant of our surroundings, counting the days until the harvest. With the harvest came our economic security for the year. On Passover, we recite the blessing for dew as a way to replenish the world with moisture, and we recite the Song of Songs, which takes us deep into the lush world of fruit and fragrance. The book, too, notes the changes: “For now the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of pruning has come.” (2:11-12)

Between Passover and Shavuot, new grain was harvested and people brought baskets of new produce to the Temple as a way of thanking God for their bounty. The grain offering was one of joy precisely because it meant that we had sustenance for the year ahead. We also had taxes connected to this bounty. Before we could partake of our own food, we had to take off a portion for the poor, the priests and, of course, bring an offering to God. We sanctify the fruit of our labors so that we understand that we work not only for ourselves.

But the joy we experience upon bringing the offering represents the end of weeks of tension, hinted at in the quote above. Rabbi Moshe (d. 1606), the scholar cited above, wrote a work called Mateh Moshe, mostly about customs and laws observed by Polish Jewry. He calls the countdown between Passover and Shavuot “days of trepidation,” probably based on his reading of a midrash (Midrash Yalkut Shimoni, Emor 23:654). He understood that farmers felt themselves to be in peril until they were sure that the harvest would be plentiful in any particular year. The economic insecurity had an impact on their spiritual life. Counting for them was not only about waiting to relive the giving of the Torah on Shavuot; it was about the fiscal expectations and the worries connected to farming.

Nogah Hareuveni, in Nature in Our Biblical Heritage, sensitizes us to some of the natural phenomena that would have made Middle Eastern farmers anxious: “Each of these 50 days can bear either blessing to the crops or irreparable disaster. It was natural that the farmers of the Land of Israel should count off each day with great trepidation and with prayers to get through these 50 days without crop damage.” Rain or harsh eastern winds could wreak havoc on the harvest.

Shavuot is the only one of our three pilgrimage holidays (Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot) that is not marked by a specific date but is dependent on our act of counting. Some believe that this counting connected Shavuot to Passover in powerful spiritual ways, averting pagan celebrations that had to do with marking agricultural accomplishments alone. Seeking to spiritualize economic stresses and economic gains, we think of Passover and Shavuot within fiscal terms and religious frameworks, elevating pure agricultural anxieties and expressions of happiness to a spiritual art form.

We know all about economic downturns. We know about the 99 percent and Wall Street bonuses. What we don’t always appreciate are the spiritual, emotional and psychic costs of changing economies and how important it is to acknowledge trepidation within a religious framework. Money is powerfully connected to identity. Our capacity to count down or count up means something more if we see it within a sacred lens. Trepidation can be paralyzing, but sometimes it gives way to joy. And when it does, we count the days for the blessing they are.

Happy counting, and happy Shavuot.

Dr. Erica Brown is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and consults for the Jewish Agency and other Jewish nonprofits. She is the author of In the Narrow Places (OU Press/Maggid), Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Spiritual Boredom and Confronting Scandal. Subscribe to her Weekly Jewish Wisdom list at leadingwithmeaning.com.

Religious belief vs. pretext

There I stood, 13 and terrified. At Beth Torah Congregation in Toronto, on a bimah that my grandfather had literally helped build, I was chanting from a Torah scroll that his father had saved from their synagogue in eastern Poland and smuggled through the war – the same parchment from which my father, uncles and cousins had all read in turn.

The congregation’s eyes seemed to bore tiny holes into my skull as I read the most infamous words of my Torah portion, Acharei Mot: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.”

Bathed in family history and tradition, I thought I was about to drown. I may not have been the first gay shlemazel to have to swallow the words of Leviticus 18:22 during his bar mitzvah, but as the text passed my lips, I still felt completely alone.

The following year, as I was beginning to come out to my family and friends, the Supreme Court of Canada told an evangelical Christian university that it was free to exclude gays from its teacher education program. More than a decade later, the same university, Trinity Western, is invoking that ruling – and my bar mitzvah portion – as it claims the right to open an anti-gay law school.

They’re wrong, and anyone who truly cares about religious freedom should say so.

It’s far from clear that the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision – written, as it was, at a different time and on different facts – still empowers Trinity Western to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Yet, even if it does, the university’s anti-gay policy makes a mockery of freedom of religion. It’s one thing for people of faith to believe that gays are doomed to eternal hellfire, but it’s quite another to exclude them from a law school on that basis.

Read a Christian Bible cover to cover. It doesn’t end well for the Jews, either. Still, those of us who don’t accept Jesus Christ as lord and savior are welcome at Trinity Western University – provided that we don’t sleep with anyone of the same sex while we’re there.

If allowing Jewish students to practise Judaism isn’t a threat to Trinity Western’s religious freedom, what’s so different about allowing gay students to be gay? After all, according to evangelical Christians, we’re all going to end up shvitzing in the same place.

Imagine if the university required Jewish students to promise to abstain from Judaism. If that isn’t discrimination, neither was the Spanish Inquisition.

Can Christian scripture provide a basis for homophobia? Of course it can. Look no further than Leviticus 18:22. But the same set of texts might just as readily forgive racism, slavery or antisemitism. Why doesn’t Trinity Western discriminate against Jews or blacks the way it discriminates against gays? Because only fanatics would ever accept religious excuses for the former, and nothing does more to discredit religious freedom than using it to justify bigotry.

Anti-gay discrimination should be no exception. Those of us who depend on freedom of religion to protect our own beliefs should be the first to condemn its misuse. That doesn’t mean asking Christians (or Jews, or Muslims) to ignore scripture that prohibits homosexuality – though many do, and more should – but it does require us never to condone its use as a basis for odious discrimination. After centuries of blood libel, Jews are only too familiar with intolerance preached from the pulpit.

Those words that darkened my bar mitzvah portion – “v’et zachar lo tishkav mishk’vei ishah to’evah hu” – are chanted in synagogues around the world each year. After more than a decade, they still sting.

We can’t rewrite Leviticus, nor can we force the faithful to overlook passages that give us pause. But that doesn’t mean we can’t distinguish religious belief from religious pretext. If freedom of religion can justify almost anything, then it will be good for almost nothing. It’s up to those of us who need it to defend it from itself.

Adam Goldenberg is a Kirby Simon Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School, a former Liberal speechwriter and a contributor to CBC News: The National. Follow him at twitter.com/adamgoldenberg. This article originally appeared in the Canadian Jewish News and is reprinted with permission. For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

Connect with “inner reality”

There is an elderly gentleman at a long-term care facility in Ottawa. I have not met him, but I have seen his photograph. At 99, he still possesses a spark in his eye. He looks much more physically robust than his biological age would suggest. And his features still retain the handsomeness I imagine he was said to possess as a younger man.

Recently, I spoke with his daughter, who I’ll call Leah. Leah is keenly aware of the disconnect between how people may perceive her father – living to an age most of us will only dream of, still in decent physical shape, happy and smiling – and her awareness that he once was so much more.

It’s not truly him, she explains, her voice cracking. Her father was always fastidiously groomed, courteous and extremely gentle. Now, under the spell of dementia, what she calls a “cruel” and “insidious” disease, on some days her father must be cajoled into showering. He has, on occasion, resorted to physical outbursts. And he has lost the social filter that we all depend on to carry us through everyday interactions. “It destroys me on a daily basis,” Leah says. Every time she sees him, she adds, she feels he has “died a little bit more.”

But bring him to music, and his spirit comes alive again. Leah sometimes performs at the facility where her father lives. When she does, her father rises from his seat, singing, filled with joy. “That’s my daughter!” he beams with pride.

Rabbi Neal Rose has recently retired as the spiritual director of the Simkin Centre, the Jewish long-term care facility in Winnipeg. He focuses on what he calls “spiritual care,” connecting with the person’s “inner reality,” he told me in a phone interview. This may be achieved through the esthetic markers of identity – things like food, music, language and holiday celebrations – or through more formal religious practice, like synagogue services.

Sometimes, this means entering the person’s current reality. A resident, who I’ll call Mr. Cohen, Rabbi Rose recounts, was getting agitated. “Call the police!” Mr. Cohen yelled, as his children surrounded him, perplexed. Rabbi Rose put his arm around him. “Mr. Cohen,” he said, “I’ve placed the call. The police will be here in five minutes.” Mr. Cohen relaxed, and went on his way.

It’s not lying, it’s not deception, Rabbi Rose emphasizes. It’s entering into their reality.

There’s a fascinating paradox at work. While dementia in many ways robs the sufferer of their identity, it also forces their caregivers and loved ones to be in the moment with them, to engage in pure empathy.

I recently visited an elderly relative who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. She seemed thrilled to see me, though she did not recall who I was. I realized I was desperately trying to penetrate through her fuzzy memory, to crack the code, as if she had a cinematic form of amnesia. “Do you recall the sharp corners on your glass coffee tables?” I asked her. “You used to place blankets over them when I brought my toddler daughter to visit.”

I wanted to fill her metaphorical candy jar with memories, I explained to Rabbi Rose, when we later spoke. I knew how much pleasure my visits had brought to her and how much I enjoyed chatting over Rideau Bakery challah and hard-boiled eggs at her home, the house she had lived in with her family for decades.

My instinct was understandable, but not realistic. “Not if she no longer has a candy jar to fill,” Rabbi Rose offered back. What’s more, too much pressing the dementia sufferer to remember can only leave both the sufferer and their family members in a circle of frustration and anxiety. This is a dynamic that Rabbi Rose emphasized, and which was echoed by Dr. Lee Blecher, a primary care physician in Virginia who treats dementia patients.

Still, Rabbi Rose emphasizes that it’s important for loved ones and caregivers to comprehend the whole person. At the Simkin Centre, a glass box is placed outside every room. Family members fill it with mementos. Of course, the totality of who a person is can never fit inside a glass box. But it’s a gentle reminder of the tension that exists between engaging a person as they are, right here and right now, and imagining a past that puts the present into sharp, sometimes wistful, but ultimately poetic, relief.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. This article was originally published in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.