Shabbat Ha-Chodesh: Acts of Defiance

Last night Middy and I went to Chicago’s Symphony Hall to hear a program called “Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin”.  This was a benefit concert for the Jewish United Fund /Jewish Federation of Chicago Holocaust Community Services program. This program helps Holocaust survivors in Chicagoland to live out their sunset years with hope and dignity. In fact, there were three hundred survivors at the concert. The Symphony Hall concert was a mult-media performance that told the story of Maestro Raphael Schacter and his choir of 150 fellow prisoners at the Terezin concentration camp outside of Prague. Terezin was a “show camp” for the Nazi’s, designed to convince the world that Jews who had been herded into concentration camps for extermination were in fact being treated humanely. They therefore allowed some measure of artistic and literary expression by the inmates. Maestro Schacter, a Jewish pianist and conductor from Prague, brought the score from Verdi’s “Requiem” with him to the camp when he, himself, was interred there. Using that one score, he taught his 150 singers the music by rote, and performed the Requiem 16 times in the camp. The final performance was held before visiting members of the International Red Cross and the Nazi SS.

What was “defiant” about performing the Requiem? In learning the score and performing the music with only a piano accompaniment, the Maestro and the members of the choir asserted their humanity in the face of Nazi Germany’s attempt to strip that from them. The words to the Requiem, sung directly to the SS attending that final performance, were words that the camp inmates could sing, but could not say. The words of the Requiem take on a particular poignancy when one considers the setting for the performance:

What can a wretch like me say?
Whom shall I ask to intercede for me,
when even the just ones are unsafe?

A written book will be brought forth,
which contains everything
for which the world will be judged.

Therefore when the Judge takes His seat,
whatever is hidden will be revealed:
nothing shall remain unavenged.

Can you imagine what it must have felt like for the Jewish inmates of that camp to be able to sing those words to their SS tormentors sitting before them in the audience?

This evening is the anniversary of another day of defiance. This Shabbat marks a special Sabbath, called “Shabbat Ha-Chodesh”, or “The Sabbath of THE Month”. The very first commandment that G-d gave to the Jewish people as a whole took place over 3000 years ago this day. The Jewish people are still enslaved in Egypt. They have witnessed nine plagues, and still they have not been liberated. Moses tells them, “This day shall be the first day of the first month of the year for you.” This too is an act defiance, for it establishes a calendar for the Jewish people. Although they are still enslaved, they will no longer mark time by the rhythms of their oppressors.  A calendar is a symbol of independence, of freedom. Slaves must adhere to the calendar of their masters. A free people takes on the responsibility of organizing its own time.

Thus, still in Egypt and still slaves, their liberation begins with a conscious act of resistance. In declaring their freedom to choose their own calendar, they have taken the first step toward liberation. This teaches us that freedom cannot be merely bestowed from the outside. Freedom requires that people actively participate in their own emancipation. Moses gives further instructions to the people. On the tenth day of the new month, each family, or groups of families, are to take a lamb and set it aside. They are to watch over it, and four days later, at twilight, they are to slaughter the lamb and place some of the blood on the doorposts of their homes. Then they should eat the lamb, along with matzah and bitter herbs as part of a sacred meal.

Having declared their own calendar, a monumental act of rebellion, the Jewish people will now act not on Pharaoh’s instructions, but on Moses’ instructions from G-d. This marks the first time that the Israelites will act on their own initiative. The action that they will take – the sacrifice of a lamb – is also a tremendous act of bravery, for the lamb is a sacred animal in Egypt. Thus, sacrificing a lamb as part of this Jewish ritual is a mark of repudiation of the majority culture and an assertion of a different set of values from that of their Egyptian masters!

But Rosh CHodesh – the new month – not only symbolizes defiance, it symbolizes renewal as well. Just as the moon renews itself every month, so the Jewish people, at times on the edge of extinction, rises up to renew itself in every age. This too is the message of the Holocaust. When a wicked empire sought out destruction, our people met them with defiance in whatever way possible. We preserved our humanity and our sense of worth, and renewed ourselves in the State of Israel and in communities throughout the world.

Shabbat Shalom

Jewish-Muslim Dialogue

A few weeks ago I delivered a sermon on four common misunderstandings about Judaism. It was rather well received, and many of you commented that you learned something new about our own religion! This week I attended a talk sponsored by the Chicago Board of Rabbis that addressed specifically Muslim misunderstandings about Jews.  The talk was led by Imam Abdullah Antepli, a chaplain and faculty member at Duke University and Yossi Klein Ha-Levi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together they developed a program, held at the Hartman Institute, which they call the Muslim Leadership Initiative.

Imam Antepli initiated the program. His goal, he said, is to heal the Muslim-Jewish divide in the United States. What divide, you may ask? Has not he Jewish community stood by our Muslim neighbors during this time of heightened anti-Muslim feeling and rhetoric in our country? Has not the Muslim community expressed empathy and provided financial support when our Jewish institutions have been threatened and our cemeteries desecrated?  That is all true, said our two speakers that morning, but our relationship comes at the cost of ignoring the elephant in the room. That elephant in the room is our differences over Israel.

One of the ways to heal that divide is for Muslims and Jews to begin to be honest with one another, and the Imam was very honest. He introduced himself by telling us, a group of rabbis, that he is a “recovering anti-Semite”. As a teen-ager growing up in Turkey he got most of his information about Jews from readings laden with anti-Semitic poison: Henry Ford’s International Jew, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and that classic Soviet anti-Semitic work, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He was inspired by the religious revival that swept the Middle East in the wake of the Iranian revolution to become an Imam. He was revolted by Israel treatment of Palestinians. Yet, as he continued to study the Koran in depth he found it difficult to reconcile the hatred that he felt toward Jews with the teachings of Mohammed.  It was then that he began to study the long and fruitful relationship between Jews and Muslims prior to the 20^th century. He also began to meet and develop relationships with Jews with whom he shared values and beliefs.  He was intrigued about how we Jews had managed to both maintain our religion and community in the United States and at the same time become so well integrated into the American mainstream. “I wanted to journey to the heart of Judaism,” he said.

At the same time he became concerned about the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the Muslim world as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He became alarmed when he found Muslims unable to distinguish between their condemnation of Israeli policies and actions toward their Palestinian brethren and anti-Semitism. He now worries that this rising tide of anger and hatred toward Jews will deeply damage Muslims worldwide and will become an obstacle for American Muslims as they seek greater integration into American life.  

Yossi Klein Ha-Levi, Imam Antepli’s Jewish partner in the Muslim Leadership Initiative, is an American born Israel journalist and author. He grew up in New York City and was a follower of the extremist right wing rabbi Meyer Kahane.  Kahane was the founder of the Jewish Defense League, whose mottos were “For Every Jew a .22” and “Never Again”. Kahane later moved to Israel and founded the Kach party that advocated the annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of all Palestinians from that territory. His party was eventually banned from Israeli politics for inciting racism. Yossi Klein Ha-Levi eventually broke with Kahane and moved to Israel, where, he writes, he gradually repudiated his “Jewish rage” and sought out a different path. He is truly the Imam’s Jewish counterpart.

Yossi Klein Halevi told us that Muslims say they have no problem with Jews. They only have problems with Zionists. From a Jewish perspective this is a fundamental problem. This is a problem because when they say that Zionism is the issue, Muslims are saying that they don’t accept Jews as a “people”, only as a religion. In fact, along with Christians, Muslims have difficulty in understanding that we see ourselves more than just a religion. We see ourselves as a people with a shared past and a common destiny, who believe in the G-d who brought us out of Egypt and who led us to our sacred homeland, Israel, to which we have returned. According to our theology, G-d made a covenant with “The Jewish People” and therefore the collective has a theological importance that is found neither in Christianity nor in  Islam. The Land of Israel is central to our self-definition as Jews. To deny that historical and religious connection is to deny an essential part of who we are. 

The goal of the Muslim Leadership Initiative at the Hartman Institute is not to make Zionists out of Muslims or to recruit new allies to the Israeli cause. Rather, the goal of the program is to help Muslims understand the historical and religious reasons for the deep attachment that Jews have to the Land of Israel after thousands of years of being a persecuted minority in the diaspora.

The subject of Israel is almost totally avoided in interfaith work. There are good reasons for that. The subject of Israel elicits complex emotions and many, including clergy, tend to avoid it altogether. Even those of us invested in enhancing and cultivating interfaith relationships do not talk about Israel with members of the other faith. After all, the topic of Israel is even avoided in many synagogues for the very same reason. If we cannot talk about Israel among ourselves without fearing that it will lead to a disruption of relationships, how can we talk about it with Muslims whose sympathies for the most part lie elsewhere? It also may be that many Jews themselves are not clear about the role Israel plays in the theological and historical self-understanding of the Jewish people. How can we be in dialogue with others when many of us do not fully understand the centrality of the Land of Israel in Judaism?

The Muslim Leadership Initiative cannot in itself bring peace to the Israeli –Palestinian conflict. But it can have a profound effect on those individuals who choose to participate in it. One graduate of the program writes that she learned that Zionism has a very different meaning to Jews than it does to her. And she learned that Jewish fears about the survival of Israel are not merely excuses for maintaining the occupation or “a deep collective pathology divorced from reality”, as she had previously thought. 

Perhaps programs like this can open up dialogue and make for more honest and authentic relationships between Muslims and Jews.

Shabbat Shalom

The Challenge of Purim

We begin our celebration of Purim tomorrow evening with our Megillah reading. On Sunday morning with our Purim carnival. Purim is a story for the ages. Haman, the villain of the story, is the archetypical anti-Semite, the kind of government official that we have seen often in Jewish history. He is a wicked man whose lies about the Jews threaten the very existence of the Jewish people. “There is a certain people,” Haman tells the King,  “scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king's laws; and it is not in Your Majesty's interest to tolerate them.” Haman wants to rid the Kingdom of the Jewish People.

 The Megillah was likely written between 400 and 300 BCE. The historical setting is accurate, yet the events described in the Megillah likely never occurred as they are described. The story is read best as a farce.  After all, what Jewish father, let alone a holy man like Mordechai, enters his daughter in a beauty contest to compete for the chance to marry a King?  Yet the story told in the Megillah falls into that category of stories that may not be literally true, but that capture the truth of experience.

I love the story of Purim because it turns history on its head. Instead of the Jewish community helplessly suffering at the hands of an evil ruler, as has been the case throughout our history, Mordechai and Esther manage to turn the tables on their enemies and emerge victorious. Instead of Haman getting rid of the Jews, the Jews get rid of Haman and his allies. But the story also celebrates violence, and this troubles me. If you do not know what I mean, pick up a Bible and read the Book of Esther to the end.

The Torah does not command us to celebrate Purim, like it commands us to celebrate Passover, Succoth, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur. The Megillah itself that tells us that Mordechai and Esther decreed this Jewish holiday. The rabbis of the Talmud debated whether Purim should be included in the calendar of Jewish holidays. Should they ratify Mordechai and Esther’s edict to celebrate this holiday throughout the ages? Many Rabbis opposed the holiday. They argued, “Have we not had enough oppressions? Do we want to increase them by recalling the oppression of Haman?” The Talmud tells us that “Eighty elders, including more than thirty prophets, have been unwilling to grant recognition to the feast of Purim.”  Perhaps they understood that our enemies would use the more lurid parts of the story of Purim against us, thereby leading to greater antisemitism. For example, David Duke, the White Supremacist, describes Purim on his website as a festival of hatred that shows the world how Jews view Gentiles.

Of course, Haman and his ilk represent absolute evil, the kind of radical evil that we associate with a Pharaoh or a Hitler. These are men with whom no compromise was possible. One of the challenges in our own day is to distinguish between the evil of Haman, which needs to be confronted and eradicated, and the actions of enemies with whom we may be able to reach out and make peace. In this respect we might learn from the actions of the Hasidic Master Zvi Elimelekh of Dinov. During the Purim celebrations, the Rabbi announced to his disciples, “Saddle up the horses, we are going to blot out the name of Haman.” Not knowing what their meant, they followed him to a local inn, where the Polish peasants were involved in a wild party. “These men are our enemies,” said the disciples, to one another. “What does our Rebbe mean to do?”

The Rebbe and his disciples entered to inn. The peasants saw them and stopped their carousing. The music stopped. Tension filled the air. You could hear a pin drop. Then the Rebbe looked at one of the peasants and stretched out his hand. The peasants looked at one another. Slowly, one of them stepped forward and took the Rebbe’s hand in his own. They started dancing. The musicians began playing. In a few moments, the disciples of the Rebbe and the local peasants were dancing with one another.

This ought to be the message of Purim. Our ultimate goal should be that we work to rid the world of hatred, not of those who hate. On Purim may we re-dedicate ourselves to achieving the vision of Isaiah, that “nations shall not lift up sword against nations, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

Shabbat Shalom