IS IT TIME TO DISCARD IN-MARRIAGE AS A JEWISH VALUE?

 

Recently, an interesting email exchange took place between myself, a colleague, and a lovely woman, herself a partner in an interfaith marriage.  It all began when my good colleague, Rabbi Cara Weinstein Rosenthal, drew my attention to an article on www.interfaith.com which maintained that the Conservative Jewish position of welcoming interfaith families while at the same time encouraging in-marriage was problematic.  Uhm…this would not be the first time that a Conservative Jewish position was in some way problematic.  No surprises there.  Rabbi Rosenthal wrote:  The author, a Jewish woman in an interfaith marriage, contends that the common practice of many Jewish communities regarding intermarriage - encouraging in-marriage but attempting to reach out to those who have chosen to intermarry - makes Jews who are in interfaith marriages feel like "second-class citizens."

 

In response to the article, I wrote:

 

I'm not willing to abandon endogamy yet.  The jury is still out as to whether Jewish community can survive or in the very least be sustained by a community predominated by intermarried Jews.  If someone feels like a second class citizen because of a value we embrace, then they really need to find a community where that value has been discarded.  In the meantime, I think there are plenty of intermarried Jews who understand that endogamy remains an important Jewish value even if their own personal circumstances have lead them down a different path.  And we welcome those Jews and their non-Jewish spouses into our communities like anyone else.

 

That’s when I received the following from—I won’t reveal her name.  But she respectfully wrote as follows: 

 

Do you consider endogamy to be a Jewish value?  I agree that life is a lot less complicated when one marries inside their own faith.  But I don't believe my husband was abandoning his Jewish values when we fell in love and got married.  If anything, marrying a non-Jew made him more devoted to Judaism.  We joined a Conservative synagogue prior to the birth of our first child, and he will be the first to admit our family is more involved with our synagogue BECAUSE we are an interfaith couple raising Jewish children.  Together we have taught our children many Jewish values: charity, forgiveness, friendship, love, gratitude, protect the earth, etc.   It might be our preference for our children to marry someone Jewish, but I would not consider it a Jewish value.

 

Wow—that was a great response.  If only everyone in the Jewish world was that devoted to jewish values!  Nonetheless, the letter deserved a response.  And my letter in return follows: 

 

Thanks for writing to me directly and expressing your views.  I think honest conversation has always been important to help people both understand each other and themselves.  I appreciate your candor and the kind and respectful tone of your e-mail.  I am also delighted to hear how involved you and your husband are Jewishly and in your synagogue.

 

I rarely think of Jews who intermarry as Jews who have abandoned their Judaism.  Those renegade Jews do exist, I meet them from time to time, but for the most part, intermarriage does not imply an abandonment of Jewishness or a wholesale disregard of Jewish values.  By the same token, I don’t think it intellectually honest or even academically plausible to deny the role that endogamy has played in the faith life of the Jewish community for some 2500 years.  That’s going to be a real difficult argument to make.  And endogamy continues to be a cherished value among many Jews today—there simply is no question about that.  What is different today is that we can take a value like endogamy—or any other Jewish value for that matter!—and call into question its relevance.  That kind of reexamination and deep questioning is part of the very fabric of who we are as free Jews living in a free world.  We may question every part of our ritual lives or values we cherish, but to deny endogamy as a Jewish value makes no more sense than denying Jewish values like daily prayer, tzdakkah, Shabbat, and so forth.  Endogamy is part of the Jewish world and that’s just a fact.  Intermarriage is also now a part of the Jewish world and that too is a fact.  We’re dealing with two realities.

 

I think that in a family setting, Jewish values are protected best when a couple sees them as important and meaningful.  I suspect that both you and your husband share common ground on many Jewish values and rituals—at least that’s what it sounds like from your e-mail.  But I don’t think we can say to the Jewish community—“Hey, you want to be a better Jew?  Intermarry.  You’ll think more about your Jewishness.”  It may have worked in your own family—and that’s fabulous!—but I don’t think it’s going to work in most intermarried families.  It’s hard enough to get that to work where both parents are Jewish.  But the potential for success, I’m willing to say, is greater with the in-married couple than with the interfaith couple.  The exceptions are notable, appreciated, and commendable.

 

Statistics do not mean anything when dealing with individual families.  And I really applaud you and your husband’s connection with synagogue and with Judaism.  All the best to you and Shabbat Shalom—

THE KOSHER SWITCH

There are a few things that have distinguished the Jewish people throughout the ages, and it’s not Nobel prizes, bagels, or respected medical doctors.  It’s love of Torah, Kashrut (the Jewish dietary laws), and Shabbat.  Shabbat, in particular, has been keenly associated with the Jewish people.  Because we have literally closed shop one day each week, we have been both hailed as psychological wizards and condemned as lazy good-for-nothings.  During periods of exile and poverty, we saved every penny (every kopeck?) to have enough to celebrate Shabbat in relative abundance.  In times of war, some Jews chose to die rather than violate the sanctity of holy time.  Asher Tzvi Hersh Ginsberg (1856-1927), a cultural Zionist and Hebrew essayist known more popularly as Ahad Ha’am (meaning:  One of the People) wrote:  “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.”

Love of Shabbat, however, is not universal.  To the contrary, some among us still remember Shabbat as an oppressive Day of Don’ts:  don’t drive, don’t smoke, don’t cook, don’t use electricity, don’t purchase, don’t sell, and so forth.  It’s not that Shabbat is without a list of Do’s—there are plenty of those.  But because the Don’ts ruled the day, they ruined the day.  People knew what they couldn’t do, but had little idea of what they could do.  The very meaning of Shabbat retreated beneath a pile of Don’ts and as such, its popularity diminished significantly.  In 1950, Conservative rabbis moved to lighten up Shabbat by making driving to synagogue and the use of electric lights permissible.  In retrospect, they were minor tweaks in a Jewish world losing its connection with Jewish Law, but many saw the move as an assault on Jewish law.  Even today, some view those decisions as the beginning of the end for Conservative Jewry. 

 

Fast forward to 2015, 65 years later, and the Orthodox World has come up with an answer to electricity on Shabbat.  It is known as the Kosher Switch and allows Sabbath-observing Jews to do what they have never been able to do in the past: turn a light on or off on Shabbat.  For a more detailed version of how the switch works, check out the following website:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kosherswitch-control-electricity-on-shabbat.  The video’s narrator explains how the switch works and includes testimony of several poskim (rabbis who answer questions about Jewish Law) who give their 100% approval to this new device.  Review of the device is treated with great seriousness, but within certain circles, its kashrut is still a matter of debate.

I have watched the video three times now and each time, I find it more irrelevant.  I realize that in modern times, Shabbat has taken a brutal beating.  But now, emanating from the world that is Shomer Shabbat—protective or observant of Shabbat—a device has been invented that is hailed to make Shabbat better, and presumably more kosher, than ever before.  Really?  So this is for the past two thousand years what we have saved our pennies for, staked our lives on, even died for…a kosher way to turn the lights on?  Somehow, when God rested on the seventh day, or took us out of Egyptian bondage, both incidents cited as reasons for Shabbat—I don’t think God imagined electrical challenges on Shabbat as the focus of His/Her holiest of all days.  The reality that the observance of Shabbat has been reduced—better yet, trivialized!—into a decision as to whether one can turn on or off an electric light may be proof that no one in the Jewish world truly observes Shabbat anymore.

Shabbat is a gift to the Jewish people from God.  What is the point of this holiest of all days?  My sense is that Shabbat has something to do with being alive.  I don’t mean the heart-beating, lung-pumping, neuron cells-firing kind of being alive.  I mean the kind of being alive that makes our lives significant in the eyes of others, both family and friends, and ultimately significant in our own eyes as well.  Decades after Jews assumed leadership roles in the labor movement, and sought to limit the kind of hours that drained people of their humanity, we have now achieved the very opposite of what the great labor leaders of the past, Samuel Gompers and David Dubinsky (not to mention Moses), fought for.  We have never worked harder, longer, or more willingly sacrificed down time, than we do today.  It’s as if our careers were our lives.  Maybe for some of us, that’s true.   Who are you?  A lawyer?  A doctor?  A banker?  A retailer?  A small business owner?  Is that who you really are?  Or is that what a career-obsessed economic structure expects you to be?  Are you a parent, a child or a sibling?  Are you any good at it?  Are you a musician, an artist, a poet?  How much time do you devote to that?  Or perhaps you don’t devote time to it because of a social structure that values time only if reduced to billable hours.  Do we ever have time—or make time—to be whom we want to be?

There’s one fundamental Don’t on Shabbat:  Don’t work.  What’s work?  You know what work is.  Shabbat is the day when we don’t do that.  As for the Do’s, do what you want as long as it isn’t work. 

The saddest day in people’s lives is the day they realize they didn’t do all the Do’s they wanted to, because they never integrated into their lives that one fundamental Don’t.  Once every seven days, give up work and do the Do’s that you’ve always wanted to do.  Here’s the truth:  you’re never going to have time to do all the Do’s you want to do.  But that’s the reason for Shabbat: it is the system whereby we create time for the Do’s.  The essence of Shabbat is not how to turn on a light, it’s how to turn off mindlessness and turn on living fully and meaningfully.  Now that’s what I call a Kosher Switch.    

 

 

HOW MANY HAMANS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?

It’s Adar, the month of joy and happiness.  So this week, we begin with a joke.  How many fishermen does it take to change a lightbulb?  The answer:  Only one, but you should have seen the size of that lightbulb, it was unbelievable.

Beginning this Wednesday evening, March 4, we celebrate the holiday of Purim. Purim is a wild and happy holiday, with the reading of the biblical melodramatic Book of Esther, the invitation to actually make noise in synagogue with each mention of Haman’s name, the free exchange of gifts to family and friends, and the noshing on all sorts of candies and hamantaschen.  Given all that, it may seem strange to preface this holiday with a Shabbat dedicated to remembering Israel’s most dreaded enemy:  Amalek.  But this Shabbat is Shabbat Zakhor, the Sabbath of Remembering, the Shabbat when we are enjoined to remember what Amalek did to us during our 40 year trek in the wilderness, quote, “how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25:18) unquote.
 

The connection between this Torah portion and the holiday of Purim is that Amalek is presumed to be the ancestor of Haman.  But something deeper is going on here.  We are supposed to remember what Amalek did to us.  Well, what did Amalek do to us?  Amalek surprised us, cut us down, and took advantage of the weak and weary among us.  That, according to the Torah, but I ask again—what did Amalek do to us?  Did Amalek make us bitter and withdrawn, or did the Amalek experience change us in some other way?   The Torah is asking us to remember much more than the trauma of Amalek’s viciousness.
 

All this is a little eerie.  How can we remember that which we weren’t present to experience?  But here, too, the Torah challenges us spiritually.  We weren’t there?  We haven’t experienced Amalek?  My friends, there is an Amalek in every generation, launching attacks on our sanity, dignity, and humanity.  This should not surprise us.  What should surprise us, what should delight us is the resilience of the human spirit to bounce back, to rise higher than any of the low lives who would turn this world into a living hell.  Our sacred Jewish mythologies teach us that happiness is far stronger than hatred, and that love of God will eventually displace the racists and the bigots, the tyrants and the dictators, all the people who like Amalek, live “undeterred by fear of God.”   How do we remember what Amalek did to us?  We remember what happened, we give ourselves a few days to reflect, and then we gather to celebrate with great joy and happiness our refusal to let the Amaleks define for us what it means to be a decent or loving human being.
 

How many Hamans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Decent human beings change lightbulbs.  Hamans live in darkness.

DIRTY DANCING WITH IRAN

 

John Boehner, as speaker of the House of Representatives, holds a very important position in the hierarchy of American politics.  Should anything happen to the president, and the vice president is unable to take over, it’s the speaker of the house who is next in line.  The irony of that succession should be apparent to all, for if there are any two political actors more at odds with one another in government these days, its Mr. Boehner and the president.  That’s, in part, what makes Mr. Boehner’s invitation to the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to address congress March 3 so exacerbating for the president.  The president and the prime minister really do not see eye to eye, and the president claims that the invitation to the Israeli prime minister was made without consulting the White a House, a breach of protocol, if only unwritten.  On top of that, some in Israel believe that Mr. Netanyahu is using the address to congress to bolster his own popularity back home just prior to national elections.  And so the whole thing is sort of messy—Boehner is perhaps trying to embarrass the president, the prime minister may be using the speech as political clout, and the once behind-closed-doors tension between the Israeli and American leaders is suddenly glaringly thrust into the public eye.  Then again, these decisions are rarely neat and clean.  Politics can get down and dirty—that’s for sure.  But this entire episode should move us to ask—Just why does the president care that the representative of one of America’s closest allies, Israel, addresses congress, even if he wasn’t consulted.

What the president may be most concerned about is what Mr. Netanyahu is going to say, and what he will probably say is that the United States is inches away from cutting a deal with a country that has consistently threatened Israel and the west.  That’s right.  Word on the street is that Mr. Obama is now willing to concede to Iran certain limited nuclear capabilities.  Should Iran, a country that has repeatedly voiced its sworn commitment to destroy Israel, be given even limited nuclear capabilities?  Is that a wise move on America’s part, Iran having threatened America as well?  According to Mr. Netanyahu, it is an exceedingly risky agreement and exposes the west, particularly Israel, to eventual nuclear attack.  It was Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister’s policy of appeasement that allowed an untrustworthy and power-hungry Hitler to throw Europe into a devastating World War.  Is Mr. Obama about to commit the same error in conceding nuclear power to a bellicose and belligerent Iran?

These are important questions that all of us need to ask as we listen to the viewpoints of pundits and commentators more in the know than any of us.  But this I will say.  If I were Binyamin Netanyahu, and I felt that my closest geopolitical ally was about to make a mistake that throws my country into jeopardy, I’d be on a plane to talk to congress as well at the first invitation.  My first and foremost duty is not to Mr. Obama, but to my country.  It just so happens in this case, as in so many cases when it comes to dealing with the Middle East, the interests of Israel and America are closely aligned, although clearly the president in this case doesn’t see it that way.

Oh, well—as I said earlier, politics can get pretty down and dirty.  By the same token, I cannot think of anything more down or dirty than conceding to Iran any nuclear capability in exchange for some promise that it’s going to behave in the future.  Mr. Netanyahu—welcome to America.  Go to congress and speak the truth.

 

TEN COMMANDMENTS? NO SUCH THING!

Our parashah of this week, Yitro, is known above all else as home to the Ten Commandments, which is odd only because The Ten Commandments may not exist.  Now I realize that is a terrible thing to hear, and my intent is not to disturb anyone’s faith, and for sure someone will take me to task for it, but hear me out.  In parashat Yitro, nowhere is there a reference to Ten Commandments. Moses knows that God is going to speak, that the voice will be heard from a thick cloud covering Mount Sinai, that all the people—not just Moses—will hear it, that the people need to be pure when the communication happens and no one should venture up the mountain.  When the day of the great revelation arrived, there was fire on the mountain, it smoked, it quaked, the blare of a horn resounded throughout the camp, and when the critical moment arrives, the text reads:  God spoke these words saying (Exodus (20:1).  Nowhere in our parashah is this revelation referred to as the Ten Commandments, which should lead us to ask:  Are there really Ten Commandments at all?

There are certainly some scholars who would argue that the parsing of this section of Torah, which itself covers 13 verses, into Ten Commandments, may be good marketing but lousy scholarship.  One could argue that there are more than ten rulings in this passage.  But the point is that at no point are they ever referred to as commandments.  It is only later in the Torah (Exodus 34:28) that this sacred engraving is referred to as Aseret Hadevarim, meaning the Ten Sayings or Speakings or Statements, that we understand that ten is a critical number, but still—no reference to commandments. 

The Torah is teaching us something of great significance here.  The commandments themselves are not earth shattering.  The idea of Shabbat is certainly unique to the Israelites, and the idea f having one God is that message of monotheism, Israel’s gift to the world, but there were certainly already laws against murder, theft and false testimony.  What made the Ten Commandments unique was more than content, it was its source.  It was the idea that these ideas were spoken by God and not merely the invention of the human heart or head.  In Rabbinic Hebrew, we refer to this section of Torah as the Aseret HaDibrot, the Ten Speakings.  We focus not on the idea of commandment, but on the idea of divine communication—God speaks to us and gives us the guidance as to how to conduct our lives. 

Some claim that God no longer speaks to us.  Our biblical ancestors were luckier than we, in that regard.  But is that true?  Does God no longer speak to us or have we grown deaf to the voice of God?  If you are waiting for the word of God to materialize as do the words of an anchor on the evening news, you’ll never hear the word of God.  But if you begin to connect the dots of your experiences living in the real world, in real time, and begin to see the pattern of which of your decisions and activities create peace and growth, and which do not, the intangible word of God will crystallize before you.

Aseret Hadibrot—Ten Speakings were given to the people of Israel. The eleventh is for you and you alone.

HEY--STAY AWAY FROM THOSE HANUKKAH CANDLES!

These days, when I mention Rock of Ages, someone might think I’m referring to the hit Broadway musical or Hollywood film by the same name.  But long before the entertainment industry got its hands on a time-honored metaphor for God, Rock of Ages sat quietly on the page of the siddur containing the Hanukkah blessings.  It began the famous hymn Ma’oz Tzur yeshu’ati—

 

Rock of Ages, let our song praise Your saving power

You amid the raging throng were our sheltering tower.

Furious they assailed us, but Your help availed us.

And Your word broke their sword when our own strength failed us.

 

If only God’s words continued to break the actions of the enemies these days, we would all be a lot safer and happier.  No matter—Hanukah begins this week, the first candle to be lit Tuesday evening, and we’ll all be singing Ma’oz Tzur, Rock of Ages, the way it was meant to be sung.

 

Hanukkah, as the rabbis continue to remind us, is a minor holiday, but there is nothing minor about a prayer asking God to take care of those in this world who are intent on harming innocents.  Unlike the Maccabees, who took fate into their own hands, smashing the enemy themselves, we ask God to keep us from war and violence, and if there is a power beyond the sword that can spare us all, it would be the word of God. 

 

One of the rules of the lit menorah is to not interfere in anyway with the burning of the candles.  We are not to interrupt the flame or even use the flame to our advantage.  That’s a wide swath of no-nos, encompassing anything from using the lit candles to roast hot dogs to even reading by the menorah’s light.  Hanerot hallalu kodesh heim—these candles are holy, and as holy, we dare not touch them or use them in anyway except to publicize the miracle of Hanukkah.

 

Holiness demands caution and reverence.  We do not, for example, touch Torah parchment directly, or walk on Jerusalem’s Temple mount in that area where the Temple once stood, or take change for ourselves out of the Tzdakah box.  That which is holy is sometimes marked as such by becoming unusable, untouchable?  Why?  That’s a really good question for which, I am sure, multiple answers exist, though I will be so bold as to venture only one possible answer. 

 

Humans are, by nature, inquisitive, curious, and… invasive.  It is how we learn about the world and how we interact with it.  But when we establish a realm of holiness, a realm left untouched and undisturbed, it serves as a reminder that we are guests in a universe created by a power greater than ourselves, and faith in that power energizes and humbles, at one and the same time.  Maoz Tzur, the Rock of Ages has lived for eons before us and will continue to live for eons after us.  Ultimately, the criminals die, as do we all, but the spirit of God endures, so too the spirit of justice and compassion, the spirit of honesty and love.  Hanukkah is only a minor holiday, but it offers us some major philosophical latkas to munch on, the whole year through.  Bon appetite!

 

WOULD DINA TOO ACCUSE BILL COSBY? VAYISHLAH, 2014 / 5775

Page through the Bible and the number of titillating or sordid sex tales are few and far between, but this week’s parashah, Vayislah, comes about as close as the Bible gets to the stuff of the National Inquirer.  The story goes that Dina, Jacob’s only daughter, wandered out of the comfy and secure tents of her father to interact with the ladies in the neighborhood.  Shechem, a Hivite prince, ran into her, and she into him, and he unceremoniously raped her.  But then, at least according to the text, Shechem fell in love with her, and moved his father to secure her for him in marriage.

To make a long story short, Jacob was none too happy with this development, his sons less so, and after a negotiation in which it would appear that Shechem consented to all the prerequisites for this match to take place, two sons of Jacob, Shimon and Levi, entered Shechem’s town and murdered all the males.   

In recent times, as our awareness of women’s issues has come into sharp focus, it has been noted that the one voice absent from this biblical narrative is Dina’s.  What was her read on this unanticipated relationship?  The text describes the initial encounter as a rape, but then goes on to describe Shechem’s love of Dina.  Rape and love are not a comfortable pair.  What did go on there?  Did Dina welcome Shechem’s forward advances?  Was Dina overpowered by a prince in the neighborhood who overstepped his bounds?  Dina is silent.  We can only wonder what her impressions were.

The absence of Dina’s perspective may not be, as some have suggested, the consequence of a male narrator uninterested in the female point of view.  And we can say this based on recent developments surrounding Bill Cosby, now that some 19 women have come forward to accuse him of a variety of sexual assaults.  But wait—when did these alleged encounters take place?  Women have accused Cosby of incidents that took place some 20, 30 and even 40 years ago.  Where were their voices up until now?

The fact is that unwanted sexual advances are not generated by love but by an opportunity to take advantage of someone who is either vulnerable or powerless to fend off the assault.  It takes a whole lot of courage to admit in public that one has been abused or taken advantage of.  It could be understood as an admission of failure, a confession of weakness—an unpleasant twist to a painful situation.  And there is always the real possibility that doubts about the story will arise, that someone will cast the accuser as a liar, and by this add insult to injury.  We can’t say for sure that Cosby is guilty, but we certainly cannot say that the extensive time lapsed between crime and accusation is proof that the crime never happened. 

I hope Bill Cosby is innocent.  He’s brought a lot of laughter into our lives.  But I hope that the accusations against him are taken seriously, no matter how much time has lapsed between the alleged assault and the accusation.  It takes a lot of guts to accuse a powerful person, in public, of a crime committed against oneself. It may take 10 or 20 or 30 years for the abused to summon the courage to speak.  And as for Dina, she has remained silent for over 3,000 years.