Op-Ed – Page 34

See the light inside everyone

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Elijah the Prophet, or Eliyahu Hanavi. He’s that guy who somehow travels worldwide, to drink all the wine at every Passover seder every year. (What a hangover he must have!) Elijah is also supposed to attend every Jewish boy’s circumcision (brit milah or bris). We sing about him during Havdalah, the short service that separates the Sabbath from the rest of the week. This guy’s all over the place!

Well, he’s both all over the place in Jewish tradition and shrouded in mystery. This is the quirky prophet that never actually died, but instead ascended to heaven. He’s got three separate roles in Jewish tradition.

1) He’s a zealous prophet, reminding people how to behave properly and to remember G-d.

2) He’s known to appear and help those in distress.

3) He’s supposed to announce the coming of the Messiah or the Messianic Age.

(There’s more to Elijah’s roles, depending on what text you study.)

I hadn’t thought much about Elijah as an adult. I’m not big into worrying over the coming of a man on a white donkey (from Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a) or the Messianic Age. However, he makes an appearance in ways that capture my kids’ interest. There’s that mysterious cup on the seder plate, and the song that we sing hoping that this week will be the one where Eliyahu Hanavi shows up to bring about the Messiah’s coming. Even if a kid doesn’t attend a bris too often, he might ask questions about Elijah.

There are a lot of stories that retell rabbinic traditions about Elijah. The most powerful are ones I never forgot from childhood, and which may still be helpful today. The stories seem to align directly with those points above, that adults are already supposed to know.

From the Prophets, we know that Elijah reprimanded others, threatened them with scary stories and told them to shape up. It’s essentially “putting the fear of G-d” into them. Apparently, he was good at this role, as he was sent to do it multiple times. In Jewish folklore, Elijah is the stranger who appears and helps the poor and reminds the wealthy of their failings. It’s this combination of the stranger who appears when you least expect it and the coming of the Messianic Age that I think about most often. Why?

I was taught to try to treat everybody with respect and empathy – because that person might be Elijah. That Elijah could appear at any time, looking like an old lady or a child, a homeless person or an older person with dementia. How we treat people indicates how we’re doing on bringing about a better age, or a Messianic one. When this idea was introduced to me, I remember thinking it sounded weird.

As an adult, it makes more sense because, well, life is weird. Life offers us many opportunities to practise conscious kindness, to do mitzvot (commandments) that help make the world a better place. If we keep doing this “fixing the world” (tikkun olam), well, we might just hear from Elijah.

There was that time when we had a stranger knock at our door. My husband answered it and then told me what happened. It was an indigenous man who didn’t look well. He looked like he had been doing some traveling through back lanes, but he came to the door with our dog’s collar in his hand.

I was immediately anxious. Our dogs are never without their collars and ID tags. However, this man came along, saw the collar in the back lane, clearly beyond the fenced yard. He was worried for the dog. The good news? We called her, and our dog was happy and safe inside. She’d somehow managed to shed her collar and leave it in the back lane without anyone noticing. This kind act made me wonder: Was this Elijah, known for his affinity with dogs? In the Sefer HaAggadah, it’s said that, when dogs are happy for no reason, it’s because Elijah is in the neighbourhood.

Sometimes, one of my kids carefully saves the seat beside him at services for what appears to be an imaginary friend. We joke that he knows Elijah is coming. Instead, it ends up being the friend on her own who needs just one spot or maybe even a stranger, who we then get to welcome to synagogue.

It’s the extra granola bar in my “mom bag,” when I thought someone might need a snack – and, indeed, a hungry person turns up. He needs it to continue onwards. Who knows what that person’s potential will be? That stranger gets a granola bar because, well, he might be Elijah.

This is all mystery and whimsy, if you take a purely Western and scientific view of the world. Yet, most of us acknowledge that we can’t explain why we’re lucky or when misfortune befalls us. Is it because of our behaviour or our efforts to do good in the world? Is it because some people “deserve” misfortune? I think not.

There are amazing people, all around us, who have struggled. Some were homeless, were put in foster care as children, or had addictions. Perhaps they suffered through wars or trauma. This childhood lesson about Elijah has stood me in very good stead because, if you remember that every person has value, every soul is important, it doesn’t matter how the person’s body presents itself. Whatever their clothes or hair look like, that person could be Elijah. Better yet, every person is someone important. It’s up to us to see that light inside, the potential waiting there, and to acknowledge the “other,” as Martin Buber would say. Be ready to offer something, with love and hope, when needed. It could be welcoming someone and offering a seat, a kind word, a thank you for returning a lost item, or a granola bar. Anybody can do this. Remember, that person across from you may be Elijah. The rest? It’s up to you.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Put down “the ducky” in shul

I chatted with a friend recently about what it was like in “the old days” when someone had to take a cellphone call during synagogue. This is when there were only big, clunky cellphones. I remember seeing a doctor on call pacing in the lobby. He – and it was usually a man – looked apologetic as he listened carefully. It was an emergency. It was a doctor who needed to attend to a patient, even though it was Shabbat and he was at services.

Given the circumstances, we recognized it was OK, because it was pikuach nefesh. He was helping save a life and that level of emergency is allowed, no matter how observant you are, on Shabbat. You put a person’s life above everything else.

The media has done many features where they reflect on research that shows how social media and being attached to a cellphone or other device has affected our health. It can keep us from interacting in the real world with other people, from sleeping or focusing properly. Social media increases our anxiety levels and, sometimes, it’s an addiction. Waiting to get that next update, from a friend or a news source, can sometimes seem more important than any actual person or event taking place in the same room.

My kids know the lesson from Sesame Street and the classic song, “Put down the ducky!” Ernie wants to play the saxophone, but Hoots the Owl tells him, “Put down the ducky if you want to play the saxophone!” It’s a lesson that we must break habits – like carrying a cellphone or the rubber ducky – to learn something new, make music and interact with others.

In the Jewish context, I see it everywhere. It’s at services, lectures, at the Passover seder or Shabbat table, at the kids’ events and play dates. It’s so pervasive that those doing it don’t even realize they are blocking out the world to engage with their electronics. It’s like a body part for those folks, while its noise means others can’t concentrate.

I was at a family service on Shabbat when we were interrupted with what sounded like a radio playing. It seemed to drift on and off and it was terribly distracting. Are we hyper-aware of such things? Absolutely. I am always tired and it makes me extra sensitive to noise and stimulation. There are some folks in my family who are also noise-sensitive. Too much noise and chaos often means we just have to leave. It’s too much.

Meanwhile, while the radio-like sound continued to compete with the prayers, adults in the back kept talking over it all. My husband, usually immune, looked bothered. I encouraged him to get up and ask someone to shut it off, since I sat with a kid on my lap. I thought it might be somewhere outside, but I was wrong. It was one of the talking adults, who failed to even notice that her phone was making the noise. Even when it was finally shut off, the adults continued to talk.

The interference was so pervasive and distracting that I couldn’t wait to leave. At Kiddush, at the end of the service, I heard someone say to a kid, “You can go ask the rabbi, he’s not praying now.”

That was it in a nutshell. I found myself wondering what the heck we were doing there. Are you coming to synagogue to play live-streaming radio and talk loudly? If you aren’t praying, or even sitting quietly, as a role model for kids, why bother coming to disrupt everyone else?

Some might say this is just an isolated incident, but it’s pervasive. On Yom Kippur, there was a grandfather who thought it was OK to hop up and snap photos with his phone during the service.

As I looked at the Torah portion, Behukotai, Leviticus 26:3-27:34, for the first week of June this year, I remembered this experience. It’s a portion that emphasizes all the amazing things offered by the Divine Presence “if you follow my laws and observe my commandments.” It’s a carrot-and-stick story, it clearly states the bad things that will happen to those who don’t follow the rules.

Our understanding of the laws and commandments may have changed, but social norms still exist. We live in a society with clear tension between individuality and the common good. If you judge someone else’s behaviour, you can be told that judgment is inappropriate – even when the individual isn’t behaving in a considerate or safe way for the community. If you feel uncomfortable with someone’s behaviour, we’re taught “we can only control ourselves and our response to it.”

You may not want to stop social media use on Shabbat or want to pray at services, and that’s your choice. However, it’s probably not your place to keep others distracted with your phone so they cannot concentrate on prayer. If you’re set on having it your way, and don’t want to think about others, why join a community Jewish event to do it? Stay home to use your cellphone instead.

Winnipeg prides itself on being a friendly place, and inspired other places to adopt a United Way campaign day of “conscious kindness.” It might be time to live the slogan and think of others – if you can’t put down the phone for your own sake, please do it for ours.

How we can live after death

It is the instinct of all living things to try to stay alive, humans among them. Most religious doctrines pay a great deal of attention to this issue. And many people, whether part of an organized religion or not, believe that a spirit leaves the body after death. Where viewpoints vary mainly is what happens then.

In many belief systems, we stay alive in some form or another even after death. Hindus, like Buddhists, believe that a departing spirit is reincarnated into some other life form. Buddhists believe there is no guarantee that the life form will be human; they believe that liberation from the cycle of life is the only desirable objective, a state they call nirvana.

The monotheistic religions all have some concept of an afterlife, with outcomes based on our behaviour during our life on earth. Indeed, both Christianity and Islam see the afterlife as the most desirable state, at least for the righteous, compared with our life on earth, the current one being a “a vale of tears.” Judaism also sees a reward for the righteous, with a resurrection when the Messiah arrives to usher in the “End of Days” and heaven on earth. But Jews, in contrast, are urged to live the fullest possible life while alive, every life being precious.

Without entering into discussions on this issue as to the merits of one position or another, I have drawn some conclusions as to their relevance on the question of staying alive. Empirical evidence from religious enthusiasts is meagre, relying on faith rather than hard facts, or reports of a life, or lives, after death from thousands of years ago. These form the basis for the promise underlying the religious thesis.

The realization of a positive outcome in the religious sphere depends on an unblemished life experience. I cannot count on being among those judged as sufficiently righteous and deserving. That leaves me with the task of doing the best I can to extend the life I know about, the one I am living now. Having past the four-score mark is evidence that I have done some things right, having already survived many of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” I must have good DNA.

Chance has favoured me in my encounters with accident, disease and body-systems breakdowns. I have survived my encounter with “the big C” up to this time. I have diabetes under apparent control, but one never knows, as it works its damage asymptomatically.

I take pills in abundance to ward off the evils of sugar, high blood pressure and stroke. I quit smoking in my early forties and drink alcohol sparingly. My food habits are not outrageous, without denying myself the favourites that make life worth living. I exercise religiously when not on holiday. I have given up driving on the promise it will increase my life expectancy. Best of all, I pass my life with the woman of my dreams. Life is grand.

The other night, I spent some time with family. We found ourselves talking about our experiences with forbearers who had gone before us. For a short while, it appeared to me almost as if those ancestors were there with us, alive and sharing our good times. Like a lightning bolt, it struck me that that was truly another way of staying alive. The people in our lives who are important to us, those who have marked us in our life experience, they continue to be alive for us as long as they remain in our memories. They never disappear for us as long as we live; they go on being a part of our lives.

So, that’s the secret. We must continue to be important in the lives of the people who surround us. As long as we do that, we will stay alive even after we are physically gone. We have to cherish those we care for while we have them, in part so they will continue to cherish us.

But this does not apply to family only. It is true for all the people in our lives to whom we reach out, to all those we touch and those who touch us. If we want to stay alive, we have to do the reaching out.

Moses and Jeremiah and Isaiah and Jesus can thus be alive for us as well, if they have touched us and touched our lives. Shakespeare and da Vinci are alive for me. Spinoza is alive for me. Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar are alive for me, as is Beethoven.

They are all alive for me because they are a part of who I am. All the people who have made me what I am are alive for me every day of my life. I am surrounded by a crowd. Sometimes, they speak through me. You can’t spend much time with me without getting to meet some of them.

If I write something and it touches another soul, then I may still be alive for them whether I am physically there or not. Even for the people who no longer remember my name, I may still be alive for them in some cranny of their consciousness. That’s not so bad. If we can believe in that, in our own minds we have a future beyond our temporal experience of life.

So, now you know the secret. Go out there and talk to the people around you. Phone them. Write an email. Hug or kiss them if you can get away with it. You may get to live forever if they tell their children about you. If you know what you have done, if you have faith in it, as I do, regardless of your other beliefs, this can be your “promised land.”

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Staying calm amid bad news

Worn out by recent events? Me, too. For most of my work, I write things in advance to meet a deadline, but I can’t predict the future. Like Jewish balabustas (Yiddish for a woman who manages her household) throughout time, one way I cope is through working harder – by multitasking and planning ahead. I bake challah and meals in batches and freeze the extra. Why? So I can also work, take kids to medical appointments or even stop everything so I can sit down to help with math homework in those crucial moments before dinner.

Yet, we have a hard time calmly planning ahead when things feel out of control. Rising antisemitism, murders and crimes in the world affect us, as do natural disasters both locally and farther afield. These experiences can cause us to feel a sense of “trauma fatigue.” This can also be called “compassion fatigue,” and some say it particularly affects those in helping professions, like first responders, mental health and medical professionals, and social workers. However, it’s not limited to those people. Even bystanders to an event, who perhaps see footage on social media, on TV or in the newspaper, can be affected. Kids can be affected, too. We’re not immune to what this experience does.

Many react with a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. There may be an increased sense of panic or “fight or flight” feelings of adrenalin. Some people cannot sleep, or sleep too much. They have flashbacks to bad incidents that occurred, as well as physical symptoms. They may feel disassociated from themselves or others, and may feel less compassion for others in general. There are lots of symptoms associated with this. I’m not an expert.

However, I realized one morning as I walked my dogs that I felt weary and emotionally drained. It’s awful to hear about shootings of people at prayer, hate crimes and massive natural disasters like flooding. There are only so many times you can feel heartsick about these types of events before it takes a toll.

A recent New York Times editorial was an apology for an antisemitic cartoon that they printed. The editors acknowledged the creep of numbness and a lack of judgment when it printed this cartoon and when it came to recent anti-Jewish incidents. This numbness mirrored the New York Times’ and other newspapers’ historic failure to address the widespread rise in antisemitism in the 1930s and 1940s. The current editors pointed out the danger in this, apologized for one editor’s poor choices and the paper’s lack of oversight.

We’re all coping with a sort of numbness when it comes to the news cycles and increasingly frequent events. It’s hard to respond with equal amounts of compassion after every shooting or traumatic world disaster. What can we do to relieve this?

The following list is partial and includes both Jewish and general responses to stress.

Shut off social media. Whether you’re Sabbath observant or not, find ways to silence your phone, newsfeed or other notifications for a few hours or days. Shut off the noise on occasion and step away from the news and alerts. It will calm your fight or flight instinct.
Get outside. Take the ear buds out. Take a walk or run. Bring the dog, family, a friend or just your thoughts. Listen to the birds, squirrels, wind or the traffic. Give yourself a chance to exercise, be out in nature and smile at neighbours. See the world at a slower pace.
Read a book. Escape fiction is not just for the beach. Find something engrossing to read and lose yourself in it for awhile. If fiction isn’t your thing, learn something new with non-fiction. Study Jewish texts, geography, geology or whatever interests you. Give yourself time for your mind to do something other than freak out.
Practise deeds of loving kindness. Try every day to do something for others. It can be a thank you note, helping a friend or holding a door open for a stranger. Donate money or food to the food bank, volunteer or simply help clean up at home, work or synagogue. This is a Jewish way of keeping the world afloat.
Prayer and meditation can help us remain calm and boost our health. Everyone differs on this topic. Some religious people feel prayer “protects” the faithful. Others are skeptical but hedge their bets. Even atheists can be aided with repetitive words or activities that help tune into this part of the brain. However you see this, it’s hard to refute the scientific evidence that being part of a religious community or meditating on your own can make a substantial difference to our health and well-being.
Speak out. We can’t control much – not natural disasters or the actions of others. We can, however, work for what’s right. Judaism has a long history of social activism. While we may disagree in our opinions, we can still choose to advocate for what we believe. We feel less helpless when we talk with others who share our views and try to make positive change.
Seek out support. It’s natural to feel anxious. This is a good time to seek out others at your congregation, community centre, workplace or school and talk about how you’ve been feeling. Talk to a therapist or a rabbi. Find time for friends, family and community members who care about you.

These are only some things that might help. It’s just a start, but, as the rabbis say, “The world stands on three things: Torah, prayer/service and deeds of loving kindness.” It’s true that life isn’t boring these days, but I’m wishing for a bit of boring. Here’s to enjoying some safe, quiet and calm, and peaceful, warm days ahead. Be well.

Goats out in the wilderness

Let’s talk about goats. When I was doing research for my book Fiber Gathering, about U.S. fibre festivals, which attract thousands of people, I learned lots about goats. But what do goats, which produce milk, fibre and meat, have to do with Judaism?

In Leviticus, we read precise descriptions of the high priests’ clothing. One may scoff about the details, but I bet you’re wearing clothes. In many Torah portions, Jews think a lot about textiles. (If you don’t, you should! You’d be cold without clothes.)

We read rigid rules for sacrifice, how we should eat and how we should behave in terms of intimacy towards our partners and family. This is also the text that includes the most discriminatory and misunderstood interpretations of homosexuality.

Like any good Jewish parent, the Almighty offers us strict guidelines in Leviticus. There are things we should and shouldn’t do. However, there’s also an acknowledgement of our humanity. We make mistakes. There are times when we won’t understand how to behave, so here, too, is a Temple sacrifice procedure. This forgiveness process turns into part of our modern Yom Kippur service. We learn how Aaron makes a sacrifice to atone for the “strange fire” that his sons, Nadav and Abihu, brought to G-d and how they were killed for it. Part of Aaron’s prescribed ritual includes sending a goat named Azazel out into the wilderness. The goat carries away the people’s sins, and it lives.

My husband, a biologist, struggled a bit with this but felt comforted that, of all the domesticated animals to be cast out, goats could survive in the wilderness. I remembered the goat cheese we ate at the Taos Fibre Festival in New Mexico. We met the farmer who raised the goats and made cheese. He told us how he lived off the grid. He had to drive hours on a dirt road just to get to his mailbox, and several hours farther to get to town.

Every day, his goats are sent out into the desert to forage along with their guard dogs. Some shepherds keep dogs, others use donkeys or llamas to protect their flocks. This man described how his goats were free range and how they returned each night. He milked these goats and his cheese varied according to where they had grazed and the season. It was truly “wild” cheese – and most of his goats did fine, despite the desert predators.

While we try to follow rules, we are also aware that things change in our world. Like the goats, we are susceptible to danger. A recent JTA article (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) pointed out ways that congregations are preparing for “the next Pittsburgh” by changing the ways congregations protect themselves. The first 911 call in Pittsburgh came from the Sabbath-observant rabbi, who was persuaded the year before to carry a cellphone for emergency use. In the Poway shooting, Steve Vaus, Poway’s mayor, indicated that congregants acted quickly, using training they had received right after the murders in Pittsburgh.

A few years ago, I heard an upsetting story about our responses to potential danger. One day, a religious man was praying when the congregation’s alarm went off. He was concentrating. Although he knew how to shut off the alarm, he didn’t stop praying to silence it. A woman who worked at the shul lived nearby, heard the alarm and came running to help. Perhaps she wasn’t perfectly dressed (according to her community’s standard). She wasn’t calm – but she took her responsibilities seriously and rushed towards the emergency to help. Later, the praying man belittled the woman for being flustered and for not dressing properly. He didn’t acknowledge her speed and bravery. When she ran, she didn’t know it was a false alarm. She made herself vulnerable for the sake of her community.

I didn’t witness that “false” alarm, nor was I there when people acted bravely during the Pittsburgh or the Poway tragedies. However, we must read these situations critically, in the same way we read Leviticus. We continue to face conflicts and emergencies. Along with the rigid everyday humdrum, there’s a vulnerability that we face in the wilderness (the world).

Some feel Leviticus’s rigidity can make us wary of making mistakes or of finding solace in religion. Others suggest these rules create life’s order. We are all different. Yet, we must all cope with changes, surprises and danger. We might get cold in our environment and need to know what to wear. We might be surprised or do the wrong thing in the midst of prayer. We face danger. We are truly vulnerable out there in the world and before G-d, just like the goats.

Parents, like goatherds, have to trust that, after we offer our kids structure and skills, they will make it out there and come home again. We have to hope that our children and congregations will be sturdy and flexible enough when danger arises.

In Leviticus, the goat, Azazel, bore our sins and was alive and at risk. In a sense, we are those goats. We seek divine rules and structure, while at the same time coping with a world that requires us to think critically, adapt and be ready for whatever may happen next. It’s a wilderness out there. We must think on our feet.

I applaud those leaders who run towards the danger as Lori Gilbert Kaye, z’l, did, risking everything, and who follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Pittsburgh’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers saved lives because he made an emergency cellphone call. Our religious traditions evolve. We no longer make sacrifices at the Temple. It’s important to reconsider our habits at many other occasions other than just Yom Kippur.

I’ve been belittled sometimes because I write about knitting. Yet, we wear clothes. According to Leviticus, that’s important. Also important? Being vulnerable to both the Divine, and to change. I keep that goat-in-the-wilderness image alive. We can meet these real-life challenges if we open up our minds to what’s really out there, bring a guard dog and avoid embracing rigid biases.

A miracle in Beit Shemesh?

(photo by Davidbena)

Beit Shemesh is centrally located, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Many Moroccan immigrants were settled here in tent camps in the 1950s, followed by many subsequent immigrants,

including from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, North America, South Africa and England. For the last decade, the city has been known as a hotbed of protests instigated by religious extremists – a symptom of an Israeli political culture moving toward greater religious segregation and intolerance.

Miraculously, though, the tides are turning, bringing with it hope and optimism. For the past decade, Moshe Abutbul, who is ultra-Orthodox, was the local mayor, and he marketed new homes to this community. Before the elections last November, popular opinion was that he would win again. His only challenger was Dr. Aliza Bloch. Though she was well-known and popular as an educator and community leader, Bloch is a woman and not ultra-Orthodox in a city that has been attracting more ultra-Orthodox residents while others have been slowly moving away.

But the miracle is that Beit Shemesh residents of all stripes and styles collectively understood that our beautiful city had deteriorated into one of the poorest in Israel. Everybody wants a nice, clean place to live and raise their families – whatever their religious observance. So, in what is probably a rare occurrence in the history of Israeli municipal politics, the residents of Beit Shemesh decided it was time for a change. They broke away from traditional voting patterns and voted for Bloch, who ran as an independent, under the banner of professionalism and transparency.

Bloch made no deals or promises as part of her campaign. She promised the people cleanliness, law and order, good education and the establishment of a youth department – 50% of the 122,000 residents are under the age of 18.

Bloch spent her first day in office getting to know every single employee on a personal basis. In her first month, she met weekly with the sanitation department, including personal tours of their routes to help improve morale and services to the entire city. She organized a municipal clean-up day for volunteers of all ages in every neighbourhood. She has already replaced many department heads, and the youth groups are finally getting facilities for their weekly meetings and programs, after 20 years of meeting outdoors on the streets, regardless of weather conditions.

Even more exciting are the “town hall” meetings with every neighbourhood that are open to the public, and her efforts to bring national ministers and other influencers to Beit Shemesh to help dig this fast-growing city out of its deficit and help it flourish.

The new administration works from early morning to late at night to improve the city services. But it’s the human factor that is most interesting. Bloch has a doctorate in education. She is literally educating an entire city to respect one another and cooperate for the greater good. And that is the true Israeli miracle of her first several months in office. A diverse and highly opinionated population is learning to live and work side-by-side with mutual respect and understanding. A city that was known for anger and intolerance is turning into a beacon of understanding and mutual respect.

Mimi Estrin Kamilar is a former Vancouverite who made aliyah and is a philanthropy consultant. She is a 25-year resident and community activist in Beit Shemesh. While she has known Dr. Aliza Bloch for a long time and became active in her campaign, she is not an employee of the mayor or the municipality.

Together on path to freedom

Passover is coming! As we prepare, we think of what it means to be enslaved and to be free. Some seders focus on human rights. Others read and discuss Jewish texts about how to understand the holiday. Every year, we re-examine not only how good the foods are, but the ideas around slavery and redemption.

At one of my first Jewish events in Winnipeg, 10 years ago, I heard racist comments about indigenous Canadians. I was really upset by the incident. I was so uncomfortable that I still remember the experience in detail, even though I’ve forgotten a lot of other things over time.

I recently attended some of the lectures in an extremely worthwhile series put on by Westworth United Church called Interfaith Dialogue on Truth and Reconciliation. Each year, in the springtime during Lent, this church offers some of the best adult education programming I’ve ever attended and they welcome the entire community. The topics are thoughtful but, even more important, participants come ready to wrestle with hard intellectual and emotional ideas. I was introduced to it because Dr. Ruth Ashrafi has been a speaker as part of this programming more than once, and I’m hooked.

This year, the series was held in four different locations throughout the community, including Congregation Etz Chayim, Westworth United Church, as well as at one of the mosques and at a Buddhist Temple. It was so well attended that it filled the pews – wherever it was held.

Each session, a religious leader spoke, but he or she spoke at the lectern of a different congregation. Dr. Shahina Siddiqui spoke at Etz Chayim. Ashrafi spoke at Westworth United. It was powerful to see people of different faiths take to different pulpits. These leaders spoke, in the context of their religious traditions, on their status as Canadians or newcomers to a place with a heavy past of racism toward and discrimination and neglect of its indigenous people.

The most shattering part of the series was to hear from indigenous elders. I only attended two of the events, and heard Theodore Fontaine and Chickadee Richard speak. I cried while I listened to them. Their powerful personal, political and religious stories shook me.

These were bright, strong leaders with absolutely valid points about how they and their communities have been affected and mistreated by Canadian law and society. Their beliefs and prayers – about caring for Mother Earth, about protecting water and guarding the lives of those they love – are no different than those of other religious traditions in Canada. Yet, there are still indigenous communities who are forced to live in terrible conditions, without access to clean water and without adequate education or health care. How can people of faith accept this dichotomy? How is it that the first people in Canada don’t have access to the basic human rights that most of the rest of us enjoy?

After each set of lectures, we were sorted into random discussion groups. In the first event, we were asked to imagine what it might have been like to experience residential school and how we felt we would have reacted. What would that have been like?

All around me, I heard older Canadians mention how they didn’t know, and that their history classes didn’t teach them what had happened. They struggled with this part of Canadian history. It’s a denial that seemed familiar from German accounts of the Second World War, when people said “they didn’t know” what was happening to the Jewish people in their communities.

I could see many parallels between the stories Theodore Fontaine told, of “going to the moon” and escaping the abuse by disassociating and going somewhere else in his mind, and the novel The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, which describes the horrors experienced by a Jewish child during the Holocaust. Trauma causes us (humans) to do many of the same things, even if our religious and ethnic identities differ.

Many of us know that the trauma of the Holocaust doesn’t go away in one or two generations. Those indigenous Canadians who were sent away from their families to residential schools, where they were abused, fed poorly and otherwise mistreated – their trauma has affected their families for generations. Jerzy Kosinski dealt with his childhood Holocaust trauma through substance abuse and, eventually, suicide. It’s no wonder that many indigenous survivors do the same.

Passover is a time of year, like the High Holidays, where we throw off wrongs and bitterness in the hope of embracing new growth and change. We can throw off the bondage of old biases or ideas that have enslaved us. Prejudice against indigenous people, their traditions and the burden of past abuses needs to be addressed – by all of us.

At the end of the lecture series, the facilitators asked variants of this question: “What will you do in the next year to address reconciliation, promote diversity and inclusion, and to make change?” My commitment was to be brave in speaking out about these issues.

Now, I’m turning over the question to you. What will you do, as a person of faith, to make change? Start by reading the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action. Write to your politicians to protect the water, the earth and the peoples who came to Canada first. Go to a powwow or a reconciliation discussion. Look others, no matter who they are, in the eye and greet them with loving kindness. In short – do more. It’s the Jewish thing to do.

Remember – we were slaves in the land of Egypt and now we’re free. Free to step up, speak up and help others along the path to equal rights, respect and freedom.

Miriam’s legacy of drumming

Female hand drummers from the Iron Age II (eighth to seventh century BCE), found at the site of what was Achzib, on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel. From the Israel Museum collection. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)

In February, an Israeli ultra-Orthodox bride got lots of media attention for playing drums before a mixed (male and female) crowd of wedding guests. Putting aside issues of religious modesty and political clout, does Jewish law restrict females from playing drums?

Significantly, there is a biblical precedent for female drum playing. It dates back to Miriam the Prophetess. Having just crossed a miraculously dry channel in the Red Sea, Miriam felt compelled to celebrate. She and the other Israelite women who had just experienced the Exodus play drums, referred to in Hebrew as tof miryam. (See Exodus 15:20.)

In a 2009 article in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Prof. Carol Meyers notes, “The Bible mentions … only one percussion instrument … the tof, or hand drum, even though other kinds of drums were known elsewhere in the biblical world. Whenever this word is found, it is quite likely that the presence of female instrumentalists is implied.”

Meyers explains that this hand drum consisted of an animal skin stretched over a hollow body of any shape or size. Moreover, although tof miryam is sometimes rendered in English as a tambourine, it is not, given that it has no rattle or bells. Meyers further reports that the tambourine was not authenticated before the 13th century CE.

Additionally, Meyers points out that female figures predominate in unearthed Iron Age terracotta statutes, holding what appear to be hand drums. These women are plainly dressed, hence they appear to be ordinary people, rather than gods or members of the elite.

Few terracotta statues have been discovered in Palestine or Israel. Yet, from the biblical references of Exodus, Judges 11:34, I Samuel 18:6 and Jeremiah 31:4, we are left to understand that there was a tradition of female hand drum players.

Moreover, citing I Samuel 18:6-7, S.D. Goitein states in a 1988 article in Prooftexts, that a woman’s duty was to welcome the returning fighters and to praise them.

Of what importance were these female drums? Meyers elaborates that female public performance would (1) assume a level of competence based upon practice, (2) indicate that, in ancient Israel, there were groups of women performers and (3) imply that leaders and other members of the community acknowledged and appreciated the expertise of these women performers.

Not only that, but, in the book Miriam’s Tambourine: Jewish Folktales from Around the World (1988), edited by Prof. Howard Schwartz, Miriam’s drum had magical abilities. Relying on a 19th-century Eastern European folktale, Schwartz writes that the music from Miriam’s drum drove off serpents and kept Miriam herself in eternal life.

According to Rabbi Allen Maller’s interpretation of the Mechilta and Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, while in Egypt, Miriam taught all the Israelite women how to play the drum. Moreover, he writes on blogs.timesofisrael.com, once the plagues started, Miriam repeatedly reminded the women of all that she had taught them and that, as a sign of their faith in G-d, they should all take at least one drum per family with them when it was time to leave.

Still it is not clear from whom Miriam learned to play. Did Miriam’s mother, Yocheved, teach her to play the hand drum? Or did Miriam learn from Egyptian women?

Broadcaster and writer Eva Dadrian states in her 2010 article “Let there be music!” that ancient Egyptian musicians realized percussion was basic to their orchestras. Thus, they played drums of different sizes. Drums were particularly associated with sacred ceremonial events, but they were also used during battles to rally the troops or to spread panic among the enemy forces.

Dadrian adds that, in spite of the richness of the documentation, our knowledge of pharaonic music remains limited: without theoretical treaty or musical score, it is particularly difficult to do an archeology of music. The two main membranophones used by ancient Egyptians were the single membrane drum mounted on a frame and the barrel-shaped drum with two membranes.

In the University of California, Los Angeles Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Music and Musicians (2013), Egyptologist Sibylle Emerit claims the single membrane drum is documented in Egypt’s Old Kingdom (2575 BCE to 2150 BCE) in a scene carved in the solar temple of Niuserra in Abu Ghurab. She relates that the non-epigraphic material from the East Cemetery of Deir el-Medina, dating to the 18th dynasty, indicates that the owners of the musical instruments buried in this tomb belonged to a modest social class attached to the service of local noblemen. Thus, Emerit confirms Meyers’ assertion about the plain appearance of female Iron Age II drummer statues.

Music researcher, lecturer and performer Veronica Doubleday notes in a 1999 Ethnomusicology article that plentiful evidence shows women played the frame drum in the Egyptian New Kingdom (1570-947 BCE) dynasties. There were musical troupes in temple rituals, as well as solo drum players.

Over the centuries, Islam, Christianity and Judaism marginalized woman’s public drum playing. In a PhD dissertation (2006), Mauricio Molina writes that early leaders of the Christian religion, for example, condemned the frame drums because of their connection with the fertility cults, which the Church was struggling to banish.

Aside from Miriam, Jewish (and non-Jewish) females might have been told that it is not lady-like to play drums, as drummers need to sit with their legs spread apart and drummers sometimes “let loose” to play.

Nonetheless, today, the number of female drummers – including Jewish female drummers – is growing. As the recent bride story reveals, the numbers are increasing even within the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox community. In Jerusalem, for example, the school Mayever LaMusica (Beyond Music) offers separate drum lessons for girls and women.

Among those who grew up Orthodox are Temim Fruchter, former drummer in the Shondes, and Dalia Shusterman, who drummed in an all-female Chassidic alternative rock group. Elaine Hoffman-Watts, who died two-and-a-half years ago at the age of 85, was a klezmer drummer – many klezmer bands refused her talents because she was a woman; it wasn’t until her father (also a klezmer musician) intervened that she got work as a drummer.

Other notable Jewish female drummers with Israeli backgrounds are Meytal Cohen, Mindy Abovitz (who is also founder and editor-in-chief of the drum magazine Tom Tom), Iris Portugali and Yael Cohen.

So, the beat goes on and, after a long respite, women are again helping to produce it.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Dig more deeply into identity

The Torah portions at this time of year, in Leviticus, are sometimes described as a hard sell. Leviticus’s detailed narrative about what is pure and safe, what’s diseased or leprous, and how priests can tell the difference isn’t light reading. It can be hard to interact with this kind of text.

At the same time, these details saved us as a people on numerous occasions. Keeping things clean, considering what was healthy, diseased or spoiled – historically, these things may have protected us from scourges like the Black Death. Analyzing the details of something difficult and complicated helps us find greater truths or safety, which are not always obvious from the outside, just as we continue to wrestle with diseases or challenges we don’t understand today. Whether it’s something described in Leviticus or a new kind of virus, smart people have to work to figure these things out.

In order to keep myself “working” and intellectually active, I do lots of reading and thinking about things I encounter. However, I don’t have much time to do this while juggling my household, kids, dogs and work responsibilities. I listen to audiobooks while I do household tasks. This gives me a chance to think about something bigger than, for instance, chopping salad or changing bedding. We all have a lot of boring waiting, obligations and chores to get through. Engaging my brain and listening to a book makes me feel a lot better about this grunt work.

I used to think I had to finish everything I started, but if it’s too violent or scary, I now shut it off. I recently found a new category of book to “shut off.” It doesn’t have an easy label, like “mystery” or “non-fiction.” Maybe it should be called “superficial.” Here’s what I mean.

I was listening to a memoir that contained recipes. In itself, this was a quirky choice for an audiobook, but I like food and cooking. Beyond that, the premise was larger. The author had been editor of a publication that had gone out of business. The memoir was supposed to describe how she found new direction through her cooking. I don’t write mean book reviews, even when I’ve been asked to review something, but I just can’t recommend this book.

I got very nearly to the end when I had to give up. Why? The primary reason was that the author is described, in her biography, as a Jewish person. However, her book rhapsodized about the food she made for Christmas and Easter and, even further, about the true glory of pork and shellfish. OK, I figured, maybe her husband isn’t Jewish. But I did more research. He was.

I could live with the idea that this writer didn’t keep kosher. Heck, lots of Jews don’t. I could even live with the idea that she’d decided, for whatever reason, to celebrate Christian holidays, if only there had been some explanation of why. She rhapsodized about matzah brei (but why?!) and yet she didn’t tell her readers why she ate it in the springtime. After awhile, I even started to feel cranky about how she used way too much butter in every recipe. Time to shut it off!

At its heart, I told myself that, while using the majority culture’s touchstones, like Christmas and Easter, might make a book more saleable, it seemed like a betrayal far worse than cooking with non-kosher foods. When I thought about it longer, I concluded that the whole thing was vacuous. She’d never actually explained how the cooking had helped her heal or get over such a big professional loss. At that point, it didn’t matter how the book ended. I was done.

Awhile back, I had a writing gig on a national platform. My proud husband boasted about it to our Montreal friends. The articles paid less than what I published locally and were poorly edited, but my earnest “voice” came through. That seemed OK. Then the editor told me that she would only get in touch again after she assessed how my previous posts had done. (The ones that, while earnest, had been poorly edited.) I never heard back. I guess they weren’t successful in her eyes. Instead, I saw parenting posts on that platform that celebrated Jewish writers who extolled how they proudly chose to be secular or why they weren’t comfortable investing in their religious or cultural identities.

All around us, hate crimes are rising. Minorities – like Jews – are being harassed. Just because it hasn’t happened to you yet doesn’t mean it won’t. So, why not ask Jewish writers to dig deeper and figure out what that identity actually means? When the Gestapo killed Jews during the Second World War, they didn’t ask, “Are you assimilated? Secular? Do you celebrate Christmas?” No. Why not embrace or at least learn about your real background?

I felt angry. My time is so limited that I hate wasting these spare moments on reading something so intellectually lazy. In between raising kids and walking dogs, figuring out our taxes (in two countries) and the rest of life’s details, well, I might as well get more sleep instead. If an entire memoir, written by a well-known figure, sounds so tone deaf, it bothers me that she makes a living selling these books.

Worse, my articles might have been seen as too earnest, too religious and too detail-oriented, and were tossed in favour of someone who was happy to express his apathy and ignorance about his Judaism. It’s like the (non-Jewish) editor said, “Well, gee, we want the Jewish perspective, but only if it isn’t too Jewish.”

Leviticus is a hard slog. Yet, every year, we go through all of the five books of Moses and we try to dig deeper to find something new. There are many commentaries on Leviticus. Some explain it, and others try to give modern examples for how to relate to its narrative. These are all worthy intellectual exercises, much like choosing to listen to books while doing mind-numbing chores.

What’s not worth it? Let’s not waste time on empty-headed accounts from people who determinedly embrace their ignorance. If you want to stay committed to your identity – Jewish, political or other – keep learning and growing so you can express it with pride.

Drugs and teens

When we hear the word addiction, it often conjures up negative images or stereotypes. We might think someone has made poor choices, is down and out, or weak-willed; we might think that it’s a problem confined to the Downtown Eastside. Rarely do we think of the word disease or think of addiction as a mental health issue.

Jewish Addiction Community Services (JACS) is committed to providing opportunities for the community to learn together and, on April 4, JACS and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver youth department are presenting a community forum called The Fentanyl Crisis: How It Affects Our Teens. This free event, geared to parents, teens and youth workers, is designed to help build awareness of illicit drugs, specifically fentanyl, and to teach how these drugs affect the teenage brain, and how to talk to teens about drugs.

According to a B.C. Coroners Services report, which was published last month, 86% of fatal illicit drug overdoses in 2018 occurred inside (i.e. not on the street) – 58% in private residences. The majority of these deaths were men between the ages of 19 and 59.

While the problem of addiction in British Columbia is well known, what is less well known or acknowledged is how our Jewish community is affected. In fact, denial that the problem exists is more the reality. Rabbi Shais Taub, a specialist in addiction and spirituality, who visited Metro Vancouver in 2012, said one in 10 people are touched by addiction – whether directly or through a close family member. It makes sense that those statistics are similar in our community.

Compare the reaction of when you hear about a friend who has recently been diagnosed with cancer, or another debilitating disease. While we may not know how to help, when a loved one is affected with a life-altering illness, we are usually motivated to offer assistance, whether it is making meals, visiting or giving money to a cause. In sharp contrast, addiction tends to push us away and we tend to blame the person who has a substance use disorder, instead of wanting to rally around and help them.

Why does a family feel shame and the need to shield others from knowing their loved one is affected by the disease of addiction? Why does the person themselves feel the need to hide? Clearly, the answers are complex. In a recent visit to an emergency department, a patient pleaded with a nurse that “no one in my community must know I am here.” That person was a member of our Jewish community. Not only are people struggling with an illness, but they often can’t reach out for help or don’t know where to turn.

We must and can work to reduce the stigma of addiction so that both families and people with addiction are supported. It begins with awareness of resources and education, with fostering a culture of being less judgmental, of being curious and open, and being willing to talk about how someone may have found themselves suffering from addiction. We also need to remind ourselves of the Jewish values of teshuvah (repentance), tikkun olam (repair of the world), community and chesed (loving kindness). People knowing that there are resources available, when they are ready, is key to recovery.

The April 4 community forum includes panelists Dr. Alana Hirsh, a physician working in the Downtown Eastside; Lee Gangbar, a registered nurse who works both at St. Paul’s Hospital’s emergency department and as an outreach healthcare nurse; and Anne Andrew, a parenting coach and author. To attend the forum, RSVP at eventbrite.ca (Fentanyl Crisis). For more information on the program or JACS, email [email protected].

Shelley Karrel is the manager of counseling and community education with JACS. She has her master’s in clinical counseling, is a registered clinical counselor and also has a private counseling practice. She can be reached at [email protected].