Blackwell says DOJ confirmations = Pogroms

From the RAC's website:

In response to an opinion piece published this week on Foxnews.com, Rabbi David Saperstein, Director and Counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, sent a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell asking him to distance himself and his party from the ideas espoused in the piece.

Rabbi Saperstein's letter goes on to say that:

"The intimation that, with these confirmations, our government would become an oppressive and Christian-hating regime rather than a democracy that values freedom of religious expression is a blatant falsehood. Mr. Blackwell’s use of rhetoric invoking the pogroms, the widespread destruction of countless Jewish lives in Eastern Europe, is aimed at quashing reasoned political discourse, suggesting that the confirmation of these qualified, respected nominees is beyond the pale of our normal politics. His likening of Ms. Johnsen and Ms. Feldblum’s confirmations to the persistent and violent killing of Jews in Cossack-controlled Russia desecrates the memory of those who died in the pogroms."

So Pogroms have become the new Nazis. Good to know someone found a history book that goes back past the 1930's. Unsaid in Saperstein's letter, but I'm sure one of the more salient points, is that at least one of the nominees is Jewish (I'm assuming, based on the name, that "Chai Feldblum" is a MOT), which gives the use of "pogrom" that extra-special twist. It was so nice of him to use one of our special words when referring to one of our own! I really feel like he gets us, and I certainly feel more sympathetic to his cause because he invoked something that was so painful to my ancestors. Painful in the emotional and political sense, naturally, as having your house burned down, or a horse trample you often is.

What I had for breakfast

Had a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. There was a considerable interruption between the two as I got a call from someone I needed to interview for an article. Interesting thing I noticed is I said the bracha for the OJ but not the cereal, which would have been fine - I'm a one-bracha-covers-the-whole-meal kind of guy - except I had the cereal first. This got me thinking a couple of things:

1. Why am I bothering saying these prayers at all? Why bother continuing my Jewish practice at such a high level of commitment when it's not getting me anywhere? It reminded me and reinforced that I do this for myself, not to please or impress anyone else. And ultimately, that's where religion needs to happen; if you do it to please your parents, or your friends, or your rabbi (or your rabbinical school), or even God then it will not be successful. It becomes a chore, an externally applied burden, rather than part of your internal support and strength.

2. It is not required of us to be perfect; it is required that we make the attempt. God does not expect perfection, but rather expects that we will fall short, which is why repentance, forgiveness, and t'shuvah are major themes in Judaism.

3. I could only go two days without going off on some rant about Jewish practice and it's application to my life. Clearly I'm not meant to be a rabbi. :)

For Those Observing Today...

Don't I wish...


We celebrated The Annual Jewish Holiday today in the traditional way: we saw a movie and ordered Chinese food. My sister pointed out that the crowd at the movie theater when we got there, for the noon show, was mostly Jewish and immigrant families; when we left, it was almost all Christians. Must they steal all our traditions?

It's 5pm in Chicago now, meaning sunset was about three hours ago, so technically it's Day-After-Christmas Eve. We talked about "The Holidays" a lot this week, and I have a much longer post to write about the need to transition to a post-inclusive world, but for now I just want to say this: I have no objection to Christmas, I just feel frustrated, exhausted, and trapped because I can't get away from it without becoming a complete recluse for several weeks out of the year. I hope everyone who observes it has a happy, safe, healthy, and fun Christmas, but please remember that it's your holiday, not everyone's holiday, and the rest of us sometimes need a break.

Loyalties Divided?

At a Hannukah concert at my mom's grade school, texting from the back row (shhhhh!). We opened the concert with the Star Spangled Banner, followed, naturally, by Hatikvah.

This has become a universally accepted standard at Jewish events across the ideological spectrum (at least at the ones I see; it's possible congregations at the extreme Right or Left feel differently). But should it be? One of the traditional anti-semetic attacks is that Jews cannot be trusted because their "true" loyalty is to the "Jewish state", therefore they are not "Real Americans". Or French, or Germans, or wherever we're being kicked out of this year.

Are we making this calumny true in the era of Israel? Singing a national anthem, to a flag no less, is a declaration of loyalty. Not quite a loyalty oath or applying for citizenship, but still a nod in that direction.

Is this appropriate behavior? I've said before that I believe our identity as modern American Jews doesn't necessarily include "Israeli" anymore, but even if it did would this be ok? Imagine learning a presidential candidate sang the anthem of another country every week; it would end the campaign!

Not that we should plan our traditions around electoral politics or public opinion. But is this a tradition whose time has come? Or one whose time has passed?

Thoughts?

Loyalties Divided?

I wrote this post, originally, on my smart phone. Once I got into the tiny-typing vibe, it went very smoothly and beyond all expectations it wound up being a rather lengthy post. One of my better ones, I feel, drawing in talmudic analysis, US law, and excellent use of Jefferson Starship lyrics.

Turns out the "save" feature does not work automatically on my phone, so I must now take the following steps, in order:

1. Rewrite the post.
2. Locate my hammer.
3. Purchase a new cell phone.

The reconstructed post will be much shorter, since most of the original passionate inspiration has faded and I am working from memory rather than notes.

The question is this: at many "official" American Jewish events, especially school and camp events, we open with the Star Spangled Banner, followed by Hatikvah; should we continue to do this?

One of the classic tropes of antisemitism is that Jews can never be real Americans, Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Russians, Greeks, Romans, Brits, etc. is that they hold a "secret loyalty" to another nation, the "Jewish nation", and therefore can never be fully trusted in our own. In opening all major Jewish events with Hatikvah, we provide some small measure of truth for this calumny to work with.

I understand, or think I understand, the underlying motivation. Israel is a strong part of American Jewish identity, especially after the wars of the 60's and 70's. Singing Hatikvah is a show of solidarity with and love for Israel. But singing a nation's anthem is more than that. Singing the anthem, to a flag no less, is a declaration of loyalty. Look at Olympic athletes; the medalists sing their own anthem but not the others. Many times this is probably because they only know their own anthem, but what about the international NBA players; surely they know the US anthem in addition to their own? What about Jewish athletes from anywhere around the world? It would be regarded as highly inappropriate for these athletes, as representatives of their nation, to sing the anthem of another country.

Imagine how this would play out in a presidential campaign. If it got out that a Jewish presidential candidate (suspend disbelief for the duration of this argument and pretend there could be such a thing) regularly sang the Israeli anthem, it would end the campaign! Don't believe me? Imagine if it were a Muslim candidate singing the anthem of Saudi Arabia or Iran.

I do not mean to suggest public opinion should be the guide for our actions, and creating traditions out of fear of possible antisemitism has already damaged our religion enough. But we are now at a point where we can, and should, consider this particular tradition and reevaluate its place in our culture. I love singing Hatikvah; it always fills me with a sense of pride. But isn't that part of the problem?

And now, if you will excuse me, in the spirit of holidays recently passed, I will emulate Judah Maccabee to my cell phone's Antiochus.

Just Two Generations

The title for this blog should properly be sung to the tune of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination".

I was reading some obscure presidential history...trivia, really. At the risk of spoiling the end (go read it; I'll wait.....ready? Ok.), I got chills from this line:

Their grandfather, as a child, made regular weekend visits to hang out with Thomas Jefferson. Their grandfather was born before the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution.

From a US History standpoint, it's always shocking to remember that these issues we think of as "buried in our past" are actually so recent we can reach them in three generations. We talk about the Civil Rights movement like it's a ling time gone, but how can it be old news when there are people still living whose grandparents were slaves? For that matter, ginandtacos's example shows we're really only three generations away from the founding of this country.

Puts things into perspective, doesn't it? We're the nation equivalent of a 26 year-old recent college graduate at their first big job.

Then I put this into a Jewish perspective. We had a guest speaker at temple this past Friday. I did not agree with much of what he said (can you hear my blood boil from there?), more on that later, but he pulled several of the traditional lines about Judaism in America. Such as, "We've never faced persecution here", and "We have a great tradition in this country"; things of that nature.

Ignoring that the first point is just plain wrong, you hear this general line of reasoning fairly often. Granted, compared to how the rest of the world treats Jews, the US is a paradise for us. I mean, I can count the number of religion-based death threats I received in Junior High on one hand (three); that's unheard of in most of the world! But we act like this has been going on for a long time, and ginandtacos's article, in many ways, gives that idea the lie.

The first documented Jewish presence in America dates back to the 1650's, but the bulk of Jewish immigration happened in the late 1800's. More occurred post-WWII. Most of us don't have to go back very far at all to find our family's entrance to the country; probably just two generations, even without the huge families and long lifespans ginandtacos points out.

To me, that's a sobering thought. Partially because it means that my parents were here, and my grandparents, but to my great-grandparents this country was an alien land; not a place of tradition (מקום של מנחג - I show off in Hebrew!), but the strange land in which they were strangers.

But also partially because that's just long enough to forget. I have no memories of my great-grandparents; I know a few of them lived long enough to meet me, but to me they're essentially just names and photos. Which means every living member of my family grew up here. They - no; we - have only really known acceptance - with some small friction, perhaps. As far as we know, this land has always been a good place for the Jews.

But I've been reading a lot of history lately.

About cycles of nations.

And about other places that were paradises for Jews.

My parents and my grandparents.

Just two generations.

Admission Essay: Challenge and Blessing of Reform Judaism

Religion is not one-size-fits-all. We understand that everyone has different needs when it comes to clothing, to computers, to furniture; heck, we even have stores with 31 flavors of ice cream! But when it comes to religion many people seem to believe that there is one way, the right way, that should meet everyone’s religious needs. Reform Judaism distinguishes itself by avoiding this theological trap.

One of the greatest blessings of Reform Judaism is that authority to interpret and apply Jewish law rests with the individual. This creates a safe space where we have the opportunity – nearly, in fact, the obligation – to continue learning, exploring, and developing our understanding of Jewish tradition and practice.

This freedom also creates one of the greatest challenges facing the modern Reform movement. Without stringent guidelines and requirements, many Reform Jews neglect their Jewish education and development, virtually disappearing after their b’nei mitzvot. As a result, community leaders must struggle to keep the ritual accessible without oversimplifying and divesting it of meaning.

Rather than drawing members back to the community, oversimplification hinders membership development. The purely secular Jews will not be attracted no matter how simple the service becomes. Meanwhile, members coming to temple for community involvement and those seeking to explore their faith will lose interest and drift away because of the lack of meaning.

My high school history teacher conclusively demonstrated that the reason most people find history “boring” is because they receive too little information, not too much. He would take stories that were normally represented as dull, two-line stories and expand them into hour-long action packed sagas that ensured the message stayed with us. The same holds true of religion; oversimplifying Shabbat services is the problem, not the solution, reducing the spiritual high-point of the week to a series of confusing, empty call-and-response readings.

Imagine, instead, if each week’s service were used as an educational opportunity, providing an opportunity for improving skill and knowledge. Members driven by curiosity would be drawn to return each week, eager for the next installment. This is how I first learned the silent amidah at summer camp. The daily services were new to me, and I struggled to keep up with my friends; I started forcing myself to read the prayers in Hebrew, reading as much as I could before the group got to Shalom Rav, and getting a little farther each day. I have not regularly attended morning prayers since that summer, but even now, years later, I know the prayers by heart and the amidah remains my favorite part of the service.

One of the greatest challenges for Reform rabbis is how they navigate this issue; how do we provide depth and meaning while promoting free expression? How do we provide guidance without enforcing direction? This is the question I hope to answer as I pursue ordination.

Admission Essay: Personal Statement

I want to be a rabbi because to me the title of “rabbi” is equivalent to the Japanese “sensei”; both are “my master” and “honored teacher”. As a life-long martial artist, working on my second decade as a classical fencer, I have often been called upon to assist the instructor. I have consistently found that I get more out of the experience when I am helping others find their way, rather than just practicing on my own. One of the first lessons in fencing is that it is more important to train your mind and your eyes than your hand and body; the eyes to see from the right perspective, and the mind to understand and respond. This experience exemplifies what I hope to offer as a rabbi: to help people learn to see Reform Judaism from their own perspective, to understand and love religion and community, and to respond in a Jewish way to their daily lives.

Too many people view religion from only a single perspective. They seem afraid that learning to see more than one perspective will completely fracture their worldview. That mindset reminds me of one Calvin & Hobbes strip, in which Calvin starts seeing everything in a neo-cubist style. We learn that,

"It all started when Calvin engaged his dad in a minor debate! Soon Calvin could see both sides of the issue! Then poor Calvin began to see both sides of everything! The traditional single viewpoint has been abandoned! Perspective has been fractured! The multiple views provide too much information! It's impossible to move! Calvin quickly tries to eliminate all but one perspective!”

He successfully regains his single-perspective viewpoint, then informs his dad, "You're still wrong, Dad."

I never understood this mindset. It is much easier to navigate any terrain using multiple viewpoints to triangulate, and in every field I have studied I have likewise found that multiple intellectual viewpoints further learning and understanding. Today religion in our country is at the center of several major ideological debates, most predominately “Science vs. Religion” and “Secular vs. Traditional”. I never saw the inherent dichotomy in these debates, preferring to study on both sides to gain a better understanding. Granted, the large difference between these extremes creates intellectual pressure, but physics teaches us that pressure generates energy, which can be used to do useful work.

I saw such pressure lead to beneficial results when I lived in Oklahoma. I lived there from age three to thirteen, give or take a few months. My major Jewish memory from this time is a general theme of conflict and isolation; in a Junior High of 1,600, I was the only Jewish kid, just to give a sense of scope. There were two shuls in town, one Reform and one Conservative, and both fairly active, but all my friends there lived far enough away that I usually only saw them on Friday nights and Sunday mornings. I had the teachers that yelled at me - in front of the class - for not wanting to write a letter to Santa, and no one was surprised when major tests were scheduled for Yom Kippur.

There were good Jewish memories too. There was celebration, and learning, and family, and camp, and life that I look back on fondly; when viewed from that perspective it is unsurprising I want to be a Rabbi. But I knew my non-Jewish friends had those things too. What I had that they missed was conflict. Ironically, the community was homogeneous enough that racism and homophobia were entirely off my radar, so it was a long time before I learned I was not alone in my isolation.

I thought the lessons gained from this were strength and confidence in my beliefs, the ability to teach and explain my religion to my friends, the skill to debate religion on multiple fronts, and the desire to merge "being American" with "being Jewish". And I did get those things, but recently I realized something new.

This summer I read Jew vs. Jew, Samuel G. Freedman's exploration of the conflict between secular and religious Judaism in America, and, unsurprisingly, found myself firmly in the middle. As I dug deeper, I realized that I grew up without a real sense of Orthodox Judaism; it was as foreign to me as it was to my Christian friends. Like I said, there was the Reform temple and the Conservative synagogue and that was it, in my limited world view. I knew what Reform was; that's where we went, where I was consecrated, where the Rabbi gave my sister her Hebrew name. I knew what Conservative was; that's where the other Rabbi was, where they used a different book, and spent two days on Rosh Hashanah.

Reform was home.

Conservative was my friend's house.

I went to a Reform summer camp - Young Judea in Texas. A couple times per summer the kids from Camp Ramah came over; they were The Enemy, to be defeated whenever met on basketball court or kickball field. But after that they were Our Friends; we were all Jewish after all. They were just a little more...intense about it, and I couldn't follow their prayers. But my mom is a music teacher; I understood that some people use different melodies for the same songs, so that wasn't a problem.

A couple years before we moved away the congregations merged their Sunday Schools, so I got to learn more about what Conservative meant: the girls were bat mitzvahed at 12 instead of 13. Sometimes we went to services at one place, sometimes the other. I had friends at each, and friends at both. One Sunday I was recruited before class started to help round out a minyan; this was before my bar mitzvah, so I was handed a chumash with the explanation that it added two years to my age. It was an awesome experience; I was so proud to help out.

The point is, we were all Jewish. I knew there were differences, but I figured they just weren't important. Oh, sure, some were important, but even those didn’t really matter. You just remembered who would or wouldn't eat cheeseburgers, and everything was ok. This is where my sense of Jewish peoplehood developed, in a place where the difference between denominations mattered less than the friendly rivalry over which local football team you supported.

It's the irony of living in a low-diversity area. There just were not enough of us to get really fractious. Then I moved to Chicago, and first encountered the idea that there were so many Jews we could sit around arguing about who is or is not Jewish. That idea is a myth, though. Jews make up about 0.2% of the world population, a number smaller than the margin of error on the last global census. Put differently, that means it is possible the existence of Jews is just a statistical error.

I was struck by this realization because I always thought growing up Jewish in Oklahoma was an unpleasant "character building" experience that, all things equal, I would just as soon do without. Now I see there was a true benefit to learning Judaism in that environment. The small space we lived in stripped away even the possibility of the idea of Jewish factionalism; we were pressed together to form a single community. It was the kind of pressure that breeds diamonds.

This idea really hit home while I was watching the movie The Prince of Egypt. It was released when I was a sophomore in college, and I went to see it with a Catholic friend when we were home on break. We wound up the only people in the theater (gotta love early afternoon mid-week showings!) and had fun mocking the previews, yelling at the screen, and providing…”helpful insights” to the characters throughout the movie. Let’s just say it wasn’t a kid’s movie anymore when we were done with it.

Then halfway through the movie something happened. I don’t know what, or which scene, or why that moment, but like a comet it hit me; if I was there, they would have done that to me. They wanted to do that to me. The only reason they didn’t do it to me was I wasn’t there. They did this to me.

Suddenly I was crying. Quietly – I’m not sure my friend even noticed, or if he did he made no mention. Everything quickly followed from there. The Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition, the Pogroms; every time and place Jews were attacked, enslaved, and destroyed, those responsible also wanted to do it to me and only the fact I was born hundreds of years and thousands of miles away saved me.

Do you realize how embarrassing this was? I’d heard the Passover story countless times. I’d seen more Holocaust movies than I care to think about. Schindler’s List? Completely unimpressed and unmoved. Sure, what happened was terrible but no worse than the mini-series I watched with my family when I was eight. I picked up Maus once in our Temple’s library one week during Sunday School, expecting to read a funny comic book. The story inside was excellently written and drawn, but there was no emotional space left inside me for outrage about Jews being killed; it had already all been used. And now this, this…children’s movie reduced me to tears.

I came to realize that maybe this is why we tell the story every year. Maybe this is why we tell the story in so many different ways; eventually one will connect. The first time I heard the story of the Exodus it was like some scary campfire story, complete with evil kings, magical events, and food to eat while we listened. We gasped when Pharaoh was cruel, laughed when Moses was tricky, and cheered when the Jews reached freedom. Then it was hunt for the affikomen, eat dessert, check Elijah’s cup, and go to bed.

This movie-moment has stayed with me through the years. Now whenever I see Jews being attacked for being Jews, in fiction or in life, I hear that voice again reminding me they did this to me. Even now, in writing this, I am choked up with tears remembering that I was a slave and oppressed until HaShem freed me. And on the other side of the coin, every great Torah scholar, every prophet, every Israeli hero, well, they did that for me too. This too is part of peoplehood.

Thank God we have children’s movies.

There were other moments on my spiritual path – climbing the steps to Masada, my grandfather’s funeral, tutoring my first bar mitzvah student among them – but that moment in the theater was the first identifiable one. Then one day in Kalamazoo, Michigan my then-rabbi, Rabbi Stephen Forstein, asked a simple question: “What is your relationship with God?” I babbled on for several moments before my brain finally caught up and I fell silent. I realized no one had ever asked me that question before, and finding the answer would require me to explore entirely new worlds of thought. It was that moment, as much as I can point to any single moment, that decided me. As with fencing, if I truly wanted to understand, I would have to be the guide for others. I wanted to be a rabbi.

This experience reawakened and enflamed my passion for the Jewish people. Having identified so strongly with K’lal Yisrael, I cannot ignore it. I am driven to immerse myself within it, to help it – to help us – grow and thrive. And so here I find myself, trying not to “deviate to the right or to the left” [Deut. 28:14]. We cannot reject tradition, but we also cannot be ruled by what it says. We cannot ignore science, but we also cannot be limited by what it has proven. We cannot reject modernity, but we also cannot lose our identity within it. There is a path here, down the middle, that we can safely walk. We will need good guides to help blaze the trail, and I put myself forth to be one of them.

Rabbi in the Ring

I'm not alone.

From Haaretz:

Foreman, a Belarus-born Israeli who has lived in Brooklyn for 10 years and is studying to be an Orthodox rabbi, won the 12-round bout by unanimous decision - 116-110, 117-109 and 117-10....

Barring any surprises, Foreman expects to finish his rabbinic studies within a year, at which point he will be ordained. "I think it would be most fitting for me to return to Israel and be a rabbi for a community there," he said. "I could leave Israel once in a while to box."

Geograpic identification by song

I was thinking about this "100 post" milestone thing. Looking back, my first-ever post was 11/9/08, so I can't make 100 in a year. Instead I'm setting my sights on the end of this year. Strap yourself in, the ride's about to get bumpy.

Ready?

Go.

Birdsongs have dialects. Small differences in song accumulate until they produce identifiable differences. Learn these dialects well enough and it potentially becomes one of the easiest ways to tell where a given bird hails from.

Recently I was at a gathering of Reform Jews from around the country. It proved an interesting experience; within a group of Jews of similar ages, similar backgrounds, and similar religious upbringings there was not consensus about the melody for the evening prayers. There was definitely a large plurality, to be sure, and the variations were minor, but they stood out enough to be noticeable and to be clearly intentional, as opposed to missed notes.

It's possible most of these variants were improvisations, but I doubt it. My suspicion is these Jews sang the prayers differently because that's how they learned them. And where did they learn them?

At camp.

One of the phenomena I've noticed in modern Reformed Judaism is most changes - small ones, such as new prayers, songs, and rituals; not big ones like policy change - stem from young campers returning home and bringing their favorite parts of what they did during the summer. I suspect that one could fairly accurately identify where people went to camp by looking at the variations in the songs they sing.

I could be wrong, especially given the strong centralizing forces in RJ like NFTY. Many of the songleaders at camps across the nation are learning the new songs and harmonies from the same source. This could also be the source of variations, as individuals make mistakes and innovations and pass them onto campers, but it is also a strong normative force.

I like these variations. I like that as I travel across the country I learn more of them. It makes my own experience richer, as I integrate the ones I like into my own style. I like the way they stand out. There's a great moment in the birkat when the melody I learned continues through a break in the melody everyone else used; the accidental solo was fun for me, but I think it's fun for everyone else too, giving them a little surprise in the middle of a familiar prayer.

Identity vs. Identification

From Wendy Grinberg at RJ.org:

The term identity refers to how the individual sees him or herself. Ari encouraged us to move towards thinking about identification, that is, a process by which individuals act out what they think and feel, through institutions, interactions and intersections of culture.

His challenge to us was that while these Jews express a high identity, they express a low identification. Meaning, the problem isn't with the demand, but with the supply.

Not sure I agree with her conclusions, but it's an interesting way of viewing the problem. If there is a generation of young Jews that have strong Jewish identity, how do we encourage identification with Jewish organizations?