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My Take on Tisha B’Av
This past week, some Jews observed the holiday of Tisha B’Av. I didn’t. On Tisha B’Av some Jews fast as they commemorate the destructions of the Temple in Jerusalem (it was actually destroyed twice, 586 BCE and 70 CE). Over the years, other events in Jewish history have become associated with Tisha B’Av as well; if you’re interested, Wikipedia seems like as good a source as any for this information.
I recognize the destructions of the Temples in Jerusalem were terrible blows to the Jewish community. I recognize that the Jewish community has suffered many times. But, the destruction of the Temples, I have to admit, is a bit hard for me to relate to since it was so long ago and a reflection of such a different period. And while I do not want to minimize the tragedy of the events, I will also say that I tend to see the destruction of the Temple as an opportunity. I’m pretty thrilled that Judaism is not still a religion that practices sacrifice! The destruction allowed the Jewish people to evolve, they moved from having a central base to being a more portable people, and they were able to create a new Judaism that was meaningful to them, through prayer rather than sacrifice.
The only other way that I personally connect to Tisha B’Av is to think about ways that our world is in need of repair today; for sad events are not only in the past but in the present as well. While listening to a talk on leadership this week (it happened to fall on Tisha B’Av), I heard the following poem. It affirmed for me that there is something more I want to do than mourn an event from 2,000 years ago. Instead, I want to do something to help the world today so that generations after will not mourn what we could have prevented. There are many children in need.
And thus I share this poem by Ina Hughes (1995, William Morrow Publishers):
We pray for children
who sneak popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who throw tantrums in grocery stores and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories,
who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those
who stare at photographers behind barbed wire,
who can’t bound down the street in a pair of new sneakers,
who are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
who never go to the circus
who live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children
who sleep with the dog and bury the goldfish
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.
And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents watch them die,
who can’t find any bread to steal,
who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,
whose monsters are real.
We pray for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who shove dirty clothes under the bed,
and never rinse out the tub,
who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children who want to be carried
and for those who must,
for those we never give up on and
for those who don’t get a second chance.
for those we smother…
and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.
Anat Hoffman Arrested for Carrying Torah
I recently blogged about a woman in Israel who was attacked by an Orthodox man for wearing tefillin (ritual object that Orthodox Judaism says is only for men). Last November I blogged about a woman being arrested for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall (again, the Orthodox (and Israeli government) say women should not wear a prayer shawl there). I am deeply saddened by the fact that I am once again blogging about traditional Judaism’s (and Israel’s) mistreatment of women and disregard for liberal Judaism.
Each month at the beginning of the month (Rosh Chodesh), a group called Women of the Wall meets to pray. Their website explains their cause: “Women of the Wall, a group of Israeli women joined by Jewish women from around the world, seeks the right for Jewish women from Israel and around the world to conduct prayer services, read from a Torah scroll while wearing prayer shawls, and sing out loud at the women’s section of the Western Wall– Judaism’s most sacred holy site and the principal symbol of Jewish people-hood and sovereignty.”
An Israeli Supreme Court ruling prohibits women from reading the Torah at the Western Wall. Of course, I completely disagree with this exclusion of women. I am a firm believer in total equality. I also believe strongly in religious tolerance and do not understand why the Orthodox so often limit the ways the rest of us can express our religion.
While I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling, I understand it stands. But, what I don’t understand is why Anat Hoffman was arrested. She was not reading from the Torah at the Western Wall. She was merely carrying it to an area where she is allowed to read it. There is nothing wrong with that.
Two of my colleagues have written powerful first-hand out accounts of the events. One is by Rabbi Leah Berkowitz and the other is by Rabbi Denise Eger.
I have watched videos of the events multiple times. The first one below was shot professionally; the second by Rabbi Berkowitz. The first shows that Anat refused to put the Torah down, even when she got in the police car. The second shows a horrific moment when one of the women (Nofrat Frankel, the medical student arrested in November for wearing a tallit) is pushed down the stairs, I believe by a police officer. I have watched each video multiple times, and my feelings of complete anger and sadness only deepen each time I watch.
One of my Twitter followers wrote my yesterday to say she took her 7 year old daughter to the Kotel (Western Wall) last week and her daughter asked why the women’s side was smaller. I tweeted her back, “I hope your daughter’s daughter won’t have to ask that question.”
The Cost of Being Jewish & Jewish Institutional Survival
Lisa Miller wrote a column last week for Newsweek entitled “The Cost of Being Jewish: How the Recession Affects Religion.” She writes that many Jewish leaders take seriously the question “Why does it cost so much to be Jewish?” and she quotes Jack Wertheimer who wrote that “Sheer institutional survival now preoccupies the heads of Jewish institutions.”
How sad that is. If heads of Jewish institutions are focusing on institutional survival at the expense of other areas, then my guess is they are not spending enough time thinking about innovation, strong leadership, evolving to meet the changing needs of the Jewish community, and other worthy topics. In my experience, when Jewish organizations go into survival mode, they merely try to cut costs in certain areas but still try to do everything else the same old way. And, as we’ve seen many times, if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll likely get the same results you’ve always gotten.
In the case of American Judaism, that means that more than 50% of Jews will choose not to affiliate. It means that many interfaith families, gays and lesbians, people with physical limitations, Jews of color, and multiracial Jews will feel on the periphery and not fully welcomed into Jewish communities. It means that many people will struggle to find a Jewish voice and community that makes sense to them in the 21st century. It also means that many people will not struggle because they won’t bother; instead they’ll seek fulfillment in other areas of their lives. And that’s why I think Lisa Miller’s conclusion makes sense. She writes “Wouldn’t the central challenge of American Jewry be to encourage the broadest range of people… to identity as Jews and to raise Jewish kids? Costly barriers to entry need to be taken away, or, at least, reimagined.” Right on! Too often Jewish institutions and leaders like to tell people “they are not Jewish enough” instead of embracing them and welcoming them on a Jewish journey.
There are many Jews who do not walk into synagogues for various reasons including feeling that traditional Judaism doesn’t have a whole lot of meaning to them. Thus, we need new synagogue and non-synagogue models that will reach Jews where they are. We need to recognize that a traditional Jewish experience of showing up at a building a few times each year and reciting a bunch of words that one does not understand and/or agree with is a problem for many. Judaism needs to offer and engage people so that we all become part of its ongoing evolution. Then we won’t need institutional heads worrying about the cost of maintaining a building – instead we’ll all be involved in a conversation about why we want to proactively grow our Jewish experience.
Synagogue membership remains a sticky issue. Synagogues need money to survive. But the dues model is flawed. As Lisa Miller so accurately points out synagogue membership “is troubling, both outdated as a business model and onerous to families…” Synagogue membership, according to a 2005 study, cost an average of $1,100 per year, although in many cities it’s two or three times as much. I am especially concerned that in interfaith families it’s really hard for the non-Jewish partner to understand why we need such high dues, especially when churches operate on an entirely different model. There’s no easy solution but I do think we need to create alternatives – both to the dues structure and on a broader scale, to synagogue structure.
Lisa Miller’s column ends with a quote from Arnie Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who said “Jews have been around for a long time” and added “We’ll adjust.” I certainly hope Dr. Eisen is right, but I have my doubts. And if Jews manage to adjust, my next question is: at what expense? Not too much, I hope.
What we can learn from Religion, iPhone Apps, and Websites
I tend to read the New York Times online, either on my computer or Blackberry. This weekend I saw that one of the most blogged articles was “You Say God is Dead? There’s an App for That.” I was, of course, intrigued for many reasons as the article hit on many of the things I think about every day: technology, religion, discourse, belief and non-belief, and the God debate.
As a rabbi at Congregation Beth Adam, a synagogue that views Judaism from a humanistic perspective, we don’t need an iPhone app to debate whether God exists or not , and we also know that such a debate can become silly. It’s a particularly useless conversation when one debater means one thing by the word “God” and another means something entirely different by the word “God.”
To quote from Beth Adam’s God concept: “The concept of God has undergone constant modification in Judaism. The God of the Prophets is different from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; certainly the God of Maimonides is different from them both. It is impossible to examine here the myriad concepts for the term God, for that would take volumes. Every Jewish thinker has suggested an understanding of the term, redefining how God interacts and participates in the affairs of this world. Many feminist theologians are trying to reconcile traditional male interpretations of God and modern feminist thought. There has always been and continues to be great diversity in the Jewish understanding of God.”
And thus the conclusion in our community is: “To be a Jew has never meant that one must accept some predefined concept of God. Each Jew has always had the right to understand the term as he/she determines.” That works for me and pretty much eliminates the need for an iPhone app with comebacks and rhetorical strategy for the God debate.
The New York Times article does raise another interesting area of focus. Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY says that students have asked him how to deal with non-believers on campus. It is certainly true that college campuses, which tend to bring together individuals with diverse backgrounds, are often (hopefully!) a place where serious conversations happen and students find themselves both exposed to new ideas and defending (or perhaps changing) their old ideas.
That’s why as a rabbi who oversees youth education, I concern myself with how we arm our students to enter college campuses. How will they respond to people who are antisemitic? What will they say when a Jew for Jesus claims to be Jewish? How will they respond to Christian missionaries who want to convert them to Christianity? What will they say to an Orthodox Jews who tells them women cannot read from the Torah scroll at services?
These are all areas that we focus on in our Religious School. For knowing one’s religion and something about other people’s religions and beliefs allows one to enter into a dialog with respect and intellectual honesty – and also allows one to know when it is best to agree to disagree and walk away from the conversation.
Religion changes quickly.
I mentioned earlier that I usually read the news online. But as I was glancing at Saturday’s hard-copy of the Times, I saw that the article just under the one about religion and iPhone apps was about the religious website, Beliefnet. (I later realized the article was written by Mark Oppenheimer, who taught my Saturday morning debate class when I was in high school and he was at Yale. Small world!). Beliefnet.com has “survived since 1999 by nurturing every aspect of our conflicted spirituality” and was recently purchased by a company run by evangelical Christians. While the website was originally focused on journalism and theological conversations it has turned into a community where many were not even seeking religion. Oppenheimer writes “they wanted spiritual diet advice, depression curatives, tips on the best organic cleaning products.” In fact, the site has kept separate overtly religious content from other parts of the site to appease advertisers.
Seeing these two articles together further confirmed what I already knew.
Religion is diverse. Some people feel so strongly about defending their side that they need an iPhone app to help them. While I certainly value resources including technological tools, I also hope we educate a generation of young people to think for themselves. I would imagine that fundamentalists can benefit from iPhone apps that arm them with the proper response in a debate – since for them there is no gray, but rather only black and white. But for those of us who take a liberal perspective on our religion, there is much more nuance and need for understanding.
Religion moves quickly. Everyone has different needs (spiritual diet advice, online prayer circles, and intellectually honest theological conversations, to name just a few) – and hopefully we can each find our own place.
Fourth of July, Social Media Day, and Gay Pride
Happy Fourth of July weekend (to our readers in the US)! I hope you all have a safe and wonderful holiday weekend. In our streaming Shabbat service this week, Rabbi Barr and I talked about the Fourth of July and more broadly about religion in America. You can watch the archive which is looping all week, or click “more videos” on that page to pull up the 7/2/10 Shabbat service.
It actually feels like a week of celebrating. June 30 was the first Social Media Day, organized by Mashable. We at OurJewishCommunity.org think social media is a wonderful thing to celebrate since we’re using social media to create a whole new Jewish experience. Did any of you celebrate? Perhaps we should consider writing some new liturgy for it next year!
Last weekend we also celebrated Gay Pride. I led Shabbat services at Beth Adam and the topic of discussion was Judaism and sexuality. It was pretty amazing to review how parts of the Jewish community have come a long way with regard to accepting gays, but there is still much progress to be made. The Reform movement has made public statements toward inclusion several times, but as HUC rabbinic student Molly Kane noted in a powerful recent sermon, complete acceptance, welcoming, and “liberation” are still a dream.
Conservative Judaism has really struggled with homosexuality in the past, and in 2006 the Conservative movement accepted responsa that say opposite things, with the idea being that individual congregations can choose. So, in Conservative Judaism it is completely okay to permit commitment ceremonies for gays and lesbians and to have gay and lesbian rabbis and it’s also perfectly okay not to. I, of course, really struggle with this discrimination and lack of acceptance towards gays and lesbians, but I guess that is just one of the reasons that Conservative Judaism doesn’t work for me. I was also very disappointed to learn that among the three responsa that got a majority vote in 2006 was one that accepts “reparative therapy” i.e. basically trying to cure people of their homosexually. This I cannot comprehend.
The Orthodox movement naturally shows the most resistance to gays and lesbians – often completely excluding them from the Jewish community. Jews that rely on text assert that homosexuality is not okay because in the Bible it says “do not lie with a male as one does with a woman; it is an abhorrence” (Lev. 18:22) and in Leviticus 20:13 it says the death penalty should be the punishment for a man who lies with a man. I always find it ironic that in Leviticus 19, between the verses I just mentioned, it says you should love your neighbor as yourself. Excluding gays and punishing them with death doesn’t seem to be loving your neighbor!
I hope the Jewish community only becomes more welcoming toward the LGBT community. Happy Fourth of July!
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