Prayer against racist violence we recited this past Shabbat at Services

Racist Violence against Houses of Worship

Oh people of conscience,
Cry out.
Cry out against arrogance.
Cry out against hatred and anger.
Cry out against violence and oppression.
For God requires us to stand
In the name of justice and freedom,
For God requires us to oppose terror,
To muster our power and energy
Against racist aggression
And to protect all houses of prayer.

Oh God,
We implore You,
Look down upon the suffering
Perpetrated against churches, mosques and synagogues,
Against houses of worship in so many lands,
By the hand of wickedness,
By the hand of malevolence,
By the hand of ignorance and sin.
Today we remember, with sadness, the attacks on
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
And the loss of precious life.

With Your gentle and loving hand,
God of Shelter,
Unite all of your children
Under Your canopy of hope and love.
Bring the light of salvation and healing
To the four corners of the earth.

© 2015 Alden Solovy 

Parasha Shelakh: Asking a Good Question

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel Laureate in Physics was once asked, “Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer of businessman, like other immigrant kids in your neighborhood? [He responded], “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “Nu, did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “Did you ask a good question today?” That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist.” [1]

One of the characteristics of Judaism that is most admired, by Jews and by non-Jews alike, is the openness of our religion to asking questions. Some other religions have dogmas that must be accepted and never questioned. Judaism, on the other hand, has a corpus of literature – the Talmud—whose basis is almost entirely questions. In fact, few questions are totally out of bounds. In this week’s Torah reading we have one of them. In exploring this question, we will discover what kind of questions are good questions and what kind are deserving of …… well, of the earth opening up beneath you and your being swallowed alive to the netherworld.

The question deserving of that particular punishment was asked by one Korach in this week’s Torah portion. Korach, Moses’ cousin, challenges Moses. “Who made you the leader of the people,” asks Korach, “are not all of the People of Israel holy, and is not G-d among all of us?” This question ultimately led to G-d causing the earth to open and to swallow Korach live.

The ancient Rabbis divided questioning – and the disagreements over the answers to questions that inevitably ensued – into two categories. The first category of questions were placed in the group of “leshem Shamayim” – that is, questions and disagreements “for the sake of heaven”. The quintessential example of this kind of questioning and disagreement were the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. These sages, who lived during the Second Temple period, were often at odds with one another around ritual and theological matters. The other category of questions and disagreements was “lo leshem shamayim” – those “NOT for the sake of heaven”. The example par excellence of this – you guessed it – is Korach, our villain in this week’s parasha.  

According to Israeli scholar Avigdor Shinan,[2] a question “for the sake of heaven” is one that is posed in order to investigate, clarify or strengthen the truth. The question posed “for the sake of heaven” never seeks to denigrate the other. It is asked in dialogue, with utmost respect for opposing opinions. The Talmud is the model for questions that are asked “for the sake of heaven”. It contains a variety of opinions in response to different questions, opinions that are not only different but at times contradictory.  Yet, they are asked and answered within a context of the belief that all the answers are worthy of respect, or, as the sages put it, all are “the words of the Living G-d”.

A question asked “not for the sake of heaven” is posed in order to create conflict, to increase power, to gain a victory, or to humiliate the other.  The questioner has no interest in learning anything new, in moderating his or her position, or of paying any attention to the response of the other. He or she simply wants to win the argument and impose their world view. For the person who asks this type of question, power is more important than truth.  The questioner who asks “not for the sake of heaven” has ulterior motives for his questioning, wants to create trouble, he casts aspersion, seeks to destroy and tear down.  

The spirit of Korach lives on, writes Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, particularly in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, or, as it is commonly known, the BDS movement. Claims that proponents of the BDS movement sometimes put forth – that Israel is not the birthplace of the Jewish people, that there never was a Temple in Jerusalem, that Jewish settlement in Israel is the equivalent of European colonialism, that Israel is an “Apartheid” state – rival the claims of Korach and his company. Mark LeVine, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and an outspoken supporter of BDS recently wrote words that are painful for me to utter and might be painful for you to hear. He writes, “There is only one criticism of Israel that is relevant: It is a state grown, funded, and feeding off the destruction of another people. It is not legitimate. It must be dismantled, the same way that the other racist, psychopathic states across the region must be dismantled. And everyone who enables it is morally complicit in its crimes.”[3] Such an argument not only fails to give Israel a fair hearing, it paints anyone who disagrees with this extreme position as morally corrupt. Both Korach and this university professor engage in demagoguery: a type of rhetoric that stirs up the emotions, fears, prejudice and ignorance of people and which eschews rational discourse. Leadership like this incites the passions and short circuits rational thinking. It leads to the scene described by British scholar Alan Johnson when he rose to speak against a resolution to boycott Israel that was being debated at an Irish University. He writes, “Anti-Israel student activists tried to break up the meeting by banging on the tables, using the Israeli flag as a toilet wipe, and screaming at me, again and again, ‘[Swear word] off our [swear word] campus you [swear word] Zionist!’” [4]

This is the appeal of demagoguery. First it divides the world into two groups – us and them. Then, it takes a very complicated situation, about which people are anxious, and presents a simple solution, which includes the elimination of the other, of “them”.  In the case of Korach, the people are anxious about their survival in the wilderness, and Korach suggests they replace Moses and Aaron and head back to Egypt. In the case of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, people are anxious about conflict in the Middle East, and suggest the elimination of Israel as the solution.

So asking question, like much in life, can lead to both positive and negative consequences, depending on the questions one asks and the motivation of the questioner. Asking questions “for the sake of heaven” can lead to greater truth and understanding. But asking other kinds of questions can take us down the path of falsehoods and hatred. May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference.                         

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] Letter to the Editor New York Times January, 1988 in A Different Night by Noam Zion and David Dishon

[2] Pirke Avot Perush Yisraeli Chadash by Avigdor Shinan

[3] Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2015  “Climate of Opinion” by Alvin H. Rosenfeld

[4] ibid

Parasha Be-ha-ah-lo-techa: How to be a Good Father in Law

Do you remember the movie, “Meet the Parents”?  It starred Ben Stiller as a prospective son-in-law and Robert Dinero as his father-in-law to be, Jack.  Greg, the character played by Stiller, is a male nurse from Chicago who visits his girlfriend Pam’s home intending to propose marriage. Once there he finds he has to pass muster with Jack, an ex-CIA agent who takes an instant dislike to his beloved daughter’s suitor. Greg tries to impress Jack but everything he does only makes him look worse. 

The movie plays on the anxieties that all of us feel when meeting our prospective in-laws. We can all relate. This is one factor which made the movie such a success.  Clearly Jack is every man’s nightmare of a father-in – law. But what makes a good father in law? Our Torah reading for this week provides some answers.

Our Torah portion for this week,  Behaalotecha,  re-introduces Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who last made an appearance in the book of Exodus. This evening I want to look at that relationship, as well as two other son-in-law/father-in- law relationships in the Bible. I hope by studying this, we can gain some guidance on how to be a good father in law.  

The first the relationship I want to examine is between Jacob and his father-in-law, Lavan.  Lavan deceives Jacob from the very beginning by substituting his older daughter, Leah, for his younger one, Rachel, on Jacob’s wedding day. Lavan takes Jacob into business with him, then exploits his labor. He cheats him, and never allows Jacob to lead an independent life. Finally, Jacob has had enough. He flees with this wife, his children and all his possessions. Lavan pursues him, intent on harming Jacob and bringing back what he thinks Jacob has stolen. But G-d comes to him in a dream warning him not to cause Jacob any harm. Yet, when Lavan finally catches up to Jacob, he claims, with stupefying arrogance, that “the daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, and everything that you see is mine.” Still, mindful of G-d’s word, he lets Jacob return to the Land of Caanan with his wives, children and possessions. This is not a model of a relationship with a son-in-law that we want to emulate.

The second son-in-law/father-in-law relationship that I want to discuss is that of Saul and his son-in-law, David. Saul is the King of Israel, and David a commoner. Yet David becomes a successful warrior and is wildly popular among the Israelites. Saul becomes intensely jealous of David’s renown among the people, and wants him dead. To that end, he arranges a marriage with his daughter, Michal, who has fallen in love with David. However, David is poor and cannot pay the bride price. Saul sees his opportunity to be rid of David once and for all. “I desire no other bride price than the foreskins of 100 Philistines,” he craftily tells David, thinking that David might be killed in the process of gathering these, and Saul would be rid of him forever. “No problem,” thinks David when he hears of Michal’s bride price. David goes out with his men and brings King Saul two hundred Philistine foreskins! David marries Saul’s daughter, Michal, but David’s relationship with Saul continues to deteriorate.  I am sure you will agree this also is not a foundation upon which to build a loving family relationship.

Here is some rabbinic advice – Don’t be a father-in-law like Lavan or a father-in-law like Saul. Both men are jealous and competitive with their sons- in – law. Both men try to control them and their families. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Rachel and Leah, Lavan’s daughters, were miserable in their marriage to Jacob. Saul’s daughter, Michal and her husband, David grew to detest one another as well.

Fortunately, there is someone to model ourselves after in the Bible, and that is Moses’ father in law, Jethro. You recall that Moses is pasturing Jethro’s sheep when G-d appears to him at the burning bush. Moses returns from the divine encounter and tells his father in law Jethro that G-d told him he needs to return to Egypt to lead his people out of slavery. Some other father-in-law might have not-so-gently inquired if Moses was still taking his medication. Some other father-in-law might tell him that this is not a good time to leave the family business. Some other father-in-law might have said, ”You can go, but my daughter and her children must stay.” Upon hearing that Moses needs to leave, Jethro simply says, “Go in peace”. Moses then departs for Egypt with his wife Tzippora and their two sons.

Moses’ wife and children eventually return to Jethro’s home in Midian and do not participate in the Exodus from Egypt. We next meet Jethro after the Exodus, bringing Moses’ wife and children to the Israelite encampment at Mt. Sinai. Despite the danger inherent in the journey across the wilderness, Jethro apparently feels that it is important that Moses’ sons grow up with a father in the house. He overcomes whatever anxiety or misgivings he may have about life in the desert and puts his daughter’s happiness and grandchildren’s wellbeing in the forefront of his concerns. They might be safer living with Jethro in Midian, but Jethro knows they belong with Moses and the People of Israel. When he sees Moses suffering under the burden of leadership, Jethro offers him one piece of advice. He should appoint judges to help him. That is the only advice that Jethro ever gives his son-in-law, and Moses puts it to good use.

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses invites his father-in-law to join the community and journey with them to the Land of Israel. Jethro declines. “I shall not go; only to my land and my family shall I go.”

So we can derive four lessons on how to be a good father in law from Jethro’s example. 1) Respect the decisions of your daughter and her husband.  2) Always put their welfare before your own. 3) Just give one piece of advice – no more.  If you follow this example you will always be welcome to visit, as was Jethro.  Therein lies the fourth lesson – like Jethro, when you do visit, remember to leave.

Shabbat Shalom

Created in G-d's Image

We studied the poetry of Yehuda
Amichai (above) with scholar Rachel Korazim
in her Jaffa home. 

It is wonderful to be back following our nearly two week pilgrimage to Israel. Sixteen of us from our congregation, joined by a son and his 84 year old father from the Boston area, traveled the length and breadth of Israel, taking in the sites and learning about the people and the country. We visited the new Rabin Museum in Tel Aviv and studied the poetry of Yehudah Amichai with scholar Rachel Korazim in her home in Jaffa. We visited an Arab town that straddled the “green line” and met with Lydia Aisenberg, an Israeli woman who volunteers for an Educational Foundation called Givat Haviva to enhance Israeli-Arab dialogue and cooperation. We met with Rabbi Dubi Hayyum , a Conservative Rabbi in Haifa who studies sacred texts weekly with an imam. We met Assaf Luxembourg, an entrepreneur in Tel Aviv who does business with the Chinese.  He gave us insights into Israel as the “start-up nation”. A chance meeting with a soldier at a rest stop, a friend of our remarkable tour guide Kayla Ship, gave us an up close view into what it means to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.  Just two Shabbats ago we worshipped together at the new egalitarian section of the Western Wall. It was a deeply moving experience. We studied and discussed the story of David and Bathsheba at the ruins of David’s ancient palace. We explored Masada and we and floated in the Dead Sea. We learned about wine production in the Negev and the geological forces that create a natural wonder called a “Machtesh”.  We gazed at stars on a cool desert night and listened for the still small voice that Elijah heard when he fled from King Ahab. We picked carrots and plucked strawberries on the Salad Trail as we learned about desert agriculture from Uri Alon, a former Israeli Navy commander turned high tech farmer. We sampled Israeli beers on our bus as we traveled to the airport for our departure. We did all of that, and much more. Even those of us who had visited Israel many times agreed that we had experienced Israel close up and personal.

Uri Alon, of the Salad Trail

It is invaluable to see Israel up close, and I hope that many of you here this evening will join us for our next congregational trip to Israel in 2017. There is also great value, however, in stepping away and seeing Israel from a more distant vantage point. We were at services on Shabbat morning in Jerusalem when the rabbi of the congregation welcomed a group of young people who were visiting with their day school from Baltimore. Alluding to the recent unrest in their city, he cracked that they probably felt safer in Israel than they did in at home.  Frankly I cringed when I heard that remark. It struck me as unfortunate for a number of reasons. First, it felt like an insult to their city of Baltimore.  Second, the visitors were hardly the impoverished black youth who actually did feel threatened by the police in Baltimore – they were white children of privilege whose lives were far removed from the concerns of inner city African Americans. Third, at the very moment that the rabbi made that remark, Israel was in fact embroiled in its own controversy with treatment of Ethiopian Jews by Israeli police. I had not realized this was going on there because I was focused on the excitement of traveling in Israel and learning with my congregation. I only became aware of the irony of his comment when I returned to the United States, and could once again view Israel from afar.

          Just ten days before we arrived in Israel Tel Aviv police were recorded on a cell phone beating a young Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent, by the name of Demas Fekadeh, for no apparent reason. The release of the video led to demonstrations throughout the country that turned violent in Tel Aviv as participants pelted police with rocks and bottles and police responded with tear gas and stun guns. As in Baltimore, the demonstrators were protesting not only the immediate incident of police brutality, but the years of discrimination at multiple levels in housing, in education and in jobs. Lieutenant Colonel Zion Shankur, a decorated member of the Israeli Defense Forces and a member of the Ethiopian Israeli community, put it this way, “I know that the moment I take off this uniform, I will no longer be that successful Lt. Col. Shankur from the IDF, whose name precedes him. I will be Zion the Ethiopian, who will not be able to easily get into any club in Tel Aviv……. If I walk around Tel Aviv without my uniform and there is some act of violence or a murder, I will be the first person police will stop. And that is only because I am black.” 

Ethiopian Jews celebrate their first Passover in Israel (2012)

Of course, the historical circumstances that brought Africans to the United States could not be more different from those that brought Ethiopians to Israel. Africans were brought to our shores against their will, as slaves. As we know they were oppressed and brutalized for 250 years before their emancipation following the civil war. They then endured legalized discrimination under Jim Crow laws for the next century before finally winning equality in the eyes of the law in the 1960s. As our recent history in Baltimore, in Queens, in Cleveland, in Ferguson and in Florida has shown, there is still much work to be done to achieve equal protection under the law.

Ethiopian Jews understand themselves as the descendents of an ancient Jewish community dating back to Biblical times and have been accepted as such by the rabbinate in Israel. They are ardent Zionists who yearned to come to the Land of Israel and came there willingly. Although their historical experience has been different from other Jewish communities in Israel, they share a deep religious bond with her fellow Jewish citizens. A particularly poignant reminder of this occurred as demonstrations in Tel Aviv brought traffic to a standstill.  A group of white ultra-Orthodox men who emerged from their vehicles to recite their evening prayers were joined by some of the Ethiopian protesters to form a minyan.

Israel is indeed a country of wonders, of innovation, of contradictions as we experienced on our trip there. But it is also a country made up of human beings in all of our glory and folly. The sages had a discussion about the most important verse in the Torah. Rabbi Akiva said it was “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” from Leviticus. Ben Azzai, his fellow sage, disagreed. He chose a verse from Genesis, “This is the book of the generations of man; on the day that G-d created man, He made him in the image of G-d.” May we strive to see that image of G-d in each man and woman’s face, no matter what the color of their skin.  As Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Martin Luther King said, “We need to turn toward each other, not on each other.” To that, let us say, AMEN!