The Class I Hate to Teach

Antisemitic graffiti in Venezuela (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I enjoy teaching basic Judaism: it’s my true love, my mission, my passion. “Intro,” done well, can enrich an entire Jewish community by helping outsiders become regulars.  The class has to be more than facts and how-to’s, because Judaism isn’t just a religion, it’s a vast array of ethnicities, customs, history, and culture – as Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan famously titled his book, Judaism is a civilization. As an “Intro” teacher, I’m a tour guide, den mother, demystifier, and spiritual director.

But there’s one class in every series that I hate to teach. Not coincidentally, it covers one of the few topics specified by the tradition as a requirement. Rabbinic tradition is rather vague about what converts to Judaism must be taught before they go to the mikveh, but it is adamant that they understand that Jews have been a despised and persecuted people. In other words, they need to be acquainted with anti-Semitism.

I bring a printed-out lesson plan to the session, because I know that otherwise I will wander off-topic at the first opportunity. I march through my list: the misgivings about Jews in classical civilization, Christian attitudes about Jews that took shape in both church doctrine and in civil law, and the obsession with Jewish ancestry that surfaced in Spain in the 16th century that presaged full-blown ethnic hatred of Jews in the Western world.  I talk about Herzl’s realization, as he covered the Dreyfus affair, that the Jews of Europe faced something terrible. I talk about all of that as a prelude to the Shoah. And then we talk about the “New” anti-Semitism.

We talk about the memes that have dogged Jews through history: blood libel, moneylending, court Jews, conspiracy, communism, socialism, anarchism, pinko-Commie-whatever-ism. I tell them about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  I tell them about the origins of the term “Anti-Semitism,” that it was invented by a German journalist as a sophisticated-sounding substitute for Judenhass, Jew-hatred.

Some students who have been engaged Christians at some point in their lives practically writhe with discomfort. I acknowledge that when you’ve got one foot in each community, this can be very hard listening.  I share the fact that when I took the class as a prospective convert I found the class deeply upsetting because I felt somehow responsible. Some Jewish students look distant, and I suspect they are running through unpleasant memories and feelings. Or maybe, like me, they just hate the topic.

My impulse is to comfort. I bring cookies. I reassure. But I march relentlessly through that lesson plan, because it is important that they know this stuff. I have a duty to see to it that they understand that when you sign up to be a Jew, you sign up for this, too. For Gentiles in the class, it is important to know why Jews seem “sensitive” about some things, why some topics are funny only if you are a mad genius like Mel Brooks and can take them all the way off the deep end.

Usually the evening ends off topic: I get to the end of the list, and we trail off from “Jews run the media” into jokes and trivia about Hollywood and Jews. If I’m artful, we’ll leave on an upbeat note.  But I’m always relieved when the evening is over, because I hate this topic.  I hate, hate, hate it.

The lovely month of May

By Rabbi Julie Wolkoff. D.Min.

In March, I wrote about making my own perfume. I’ve been wearing that spicy blend for the past two months, and I love it. But this month I’m not reaching for spice, instead I crave floral scents. Driving home a few weeks ago, the world was brown and drab.

Walking through that world, I can’t remember any particular scents. But suddenly – almost overnight – it seems, the drab brown surroundings changed to technicolor. It really felt like walking out of Kansas and into Oz. The colors of spring – neon green buds on the trees, the vibrant yellow of forsythia, the hot pink, light pink, and white of blooming trees, and the multicolored tulips – all screamed out: “Look at me!” And my nose started taking notice as well.

Last week I went to one of the local schools to vote. The trees lining the walk were covered in white blossoms and the mulch around them carried a fungal note. I walked in and didn’t think about my vote. Instead I sniffed and sniffed and thought – mushrooms.

Monday night I stopped at a local farm stand to see what I could find for my dinner. I paused on my way in to look at the pots of herbs. It seemed too early to plant basil or mint; growing up in the upper Midwest, you never planted before Memorial Day. Still, there’s no food smell more enticing to me than basil and I was strongly tempted to start a garden right there and then.

When I walked into the farm stand, I wasn’t consciously thinking about seasonal food. I was thinking about buying something prepared. That is, until I saw the ramps and the fiddlehead ferns. Four days later, after reveling in wild mushroom linguini with olive oil, mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns and ramps, my kitchen still reeks of ramps. Driving the back roads for work, walking through my neighborhood, even going to the cemetery for a funeral, it is so easy to say 100 blessings on a day in May. It may seem too easy, but thinking of blessings helps me notice more than just the colors and scents. I see the way the blossoming trees line the busy shop-filled streets of a nearby town. I realize that the close-to-dying tree in my front yard has more life left in it than I had imagined. I think of so many family and friends who have May birthdays and I want to fill their homes with flowers and sweet scents.

In case the drab colors of the late winter and early spring masked my blessings, the burst of colors of May brings them back to me. Every day I remind myself to look, to feel, to smell. Every day I remember that these colors, these smells, are fleeting. The neon green will change to a light green, to dark green, and finally to yellow or red. The lilies of the valley and lilacs will remain fragrant only in memory and in perfume. The glorious spectacle in my front yard will once again be a tree that is dying. But I will hold the sights and scents of this month in my heart and I will remember that they will return when the year cycles around and comes back to spring.

There’s still life in this tree.

 

 

Rabbi Julie Wolkoff, D.Min., CT, is a hospice chaplain in Massachusetts and a past co-president of the WRN. Find her at: http://fabricfiber.wordpress.com/

Springtime

“My beloved spoke to me, “Arise my darling; My fair one, come away! For now the winter is past, The rains are over and gone. The blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of pruning has coming; the song of the turtledove is heard in our land.” (Song of Songs 1:10-12)”

Reading the Song of Songs on Passover this year was kind of a disappointment for me. Living in the mid-west, at the end of March, the grass was still brown, the trees were bare and the birds were not yet chirping. The love poetry between God and Israel (or between two people) did not resonate as much as it would have this week. It seems that the earth has come alive once again. Everything from the redbuds, to the tulips, to the growing grass is a cause for celebration and awe. As we move ever closer to Sinai through the counting of the Omer, we are reminded of our connection to the world around us and the role is plays in our lives. With one week left of our spiritual travel from the exodus to revelation, let us take in the beauty that surrounds us and rejoice in the arrival of spring.

Rabbi Lisa Delson serves as Assistant Rabbi and Program Director at Temple Beth Emeth in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“A Mask To Cover A Monster”

by Rabbi Wendy Spears

This is a quote from Juan Perez to a reporter after 3 kidnap victims were rescued in his Cleveland neighborhood. Perez was talking about Ariel Castro, who owns a house 2 doors down from Mr. Perez and often chatted to him at neighborhood parties. Surface friendliness. No one actually knew the man who kidnapped 3 women and kept them imprisoned in his house for 10 years.

Do we really know our neighbors? I can tell you that of my 5 neighbors, I know one well enough to call her a friend. The others I know by name, but I don’t really know them. This is not for lack of effort on my part. The folks across the street have come over for dinner, but they’ve never reciprocated. I’ve invited the others for coffee and cookies, but they consistently turned me down or canceled at the last minute. I’ve never been in their houses. It’s not in my nature to be suspicious of people, but because I don’t truly know my other neighbors I can’t vouch for their goodness. The street where I live is not a community. I don’t know the others who live on this street at all, not even by name. I wouldn’t recognize them at the supermarket or the gas station. Most of them are at work all day and don’t come home until well after dark. They don’t seem to be home on the weekends, either. I suspect that their houses are really just places to store their stuff. So, if there was a monster on my block, I wouldn’t know it.

I don’t know if this situation is the same for others in different cities around the country. In each neighborhood where I’ve lived over the years in various cities – Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Jerusalem, Sydney – people kept mostly to themselves. In contrast to this, I try to live the truth of two mitzvot (Jewish ways of doing and being) that I value most in Judaism: community and hospitality. I not only enjoy connecting with others to create and maintain community, I feel a responsibility to do this.

We learn one of these mitzvot right at the beginning of the book of Genesis – “It’s not good for a person to be alone.” Later in Genesis, when Abraham sees strangers walking toward his tent, he and his wife Sarah rush around to prepare a warm welcome for them which includes a meal and a foot bath. In my own life, I enjoy hosting holiday celebrations and informal gatherings for family and friends. There’s always good food and good conversation as we deepen our connection to each other. I model these values for my children and see how much the enrich my life.

In this time of Facebook and the other social media venues, it seems like people are connecting with each other. And yet, consistent reports show that they are lonelier than ever before. It takes effort and planning to be in relationships with others. It doesn’t just come automatically. I have friends and family members who are happy to be invited to an event or activity, but don’t return the favor. I have acquaintances who aren’t friends because they put very little effort into their relationship with me. It seems like they are often waiting for a ‘better’ offer when they say, “I don’t know yet what is happening on that day; I’ll need to get back to you.” I don’t think this really has anything to do with me. The people in my life who are willing to be in relationship make the time to do so because they value relationships. They’re not too busy or looking for some other activity. I find that we share other values besides being connected with and hospitable to each other. Being in relationship allows us to reveal our values and deeper selves to each other. This is a risk, but also a tremendous blessing. By opening ourselves to others, we can perceive the divine spark that dwells in our hearts, and welcome God’s presence into our lives. 

Rabbi Wendy Spears is a community rabbi in Los Angeles. Find her at http://www.rabbiwendy.com.

Behar-Behukotai

by Kari Tuling

Does God reward good behavior?

When we read this week’s Torah portion, we encounter one of two sets of blessings and curses specifically related to the performance of the commandments.

First, if you do what is good and follow God’s commandments, then all will go well for you. But, if you reject God’s commandments, then a litany of curses will be upon your head. Many of them are quite graphic; they are intended to be frightening.

Specifically, the blessings are as follows:

1. Fertility of the land (verses 4-5);
2. Peace in the land (v. 6);
3. Victory over external enemies (7-8);
4. Divine individual providence, increase of the population, coupled with economic prosperity (9-10);
5. The dwelling of the Shekhina in the midst of Israel.[1]

The Shekhina, by the way, is the indwelling presence of God, which during the wandering in the desert is represented by a pillar of fire or cloud. Though the Shekhina represents the spiritual realm, it is indeed a physical manifestation of God. The Israelites can see the Shekhina as it travels with them.

It could be said, in fact, that each of these blessings are a form of material reward.

And some of the commentators have had a genuine problem with that fact. It makes no sense to them. How can we gain material goods by doing what is right? How can it be that piety is rewarded with free stuff?

For example, Rabbi Yitzhak Abravanel (born in the 15^th Century in Spain) asks the question directly:

“Why does the Torah confine its goals and rewards to material things…and omit spiritual perfection an the reward of the soul after death – the true and ultimate goal of [hu]man[kind]? Our enemies exploit this text and charge Israel with denying the principle of the soul’s judgment in the afterlife.”[2]

And he has a point. This issue has long been a point of attack by those who have sought to discredit Judaism. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, argued that Judaism is not properly a religion because the Jewish Bible makes no mention of an afterlife. In his view, only those traditions that promise a reward in the world to come can make a claim to being a true religion.

What are we to make of this? We have a couple of possibilities here.

Manuscript page in Arabic written in Hebrew letters by Maimonides (12th century CE). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first possibility is that God really does reward us in our observance of the Torah. The great thinker Maimonides (who was born in the 12^th century in Spain) takes this position:

“…These matters are to be understood as follows: The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us this law – a tree of life. Whoever fulfills what is written therein and knows it with a complete and correct knowledge will attain thereby life in the world to come. According to the greatness of his deeds and abundance of his knowledge will be the measure in which he will attain that life.”

The more that you know, the greater your reward will be. Maimonides was, admittedly, an elitist. But he continues, arguing that you will reap material rewards as well:

“The Holy One, blessed be He, has further promised us in the Torah that if we observe its behests joyously and cheerfully, and continually meditate on its wisdom, He will remove from us the obstacles that hinder us in its observance, such as sickness, war, famine, and other calamities; and will bestow upon us all the material benefits which will strength our ability to fulfill the Law, such as plenty, peace, abundance of silver and gold.”[3]

In other words, following the Torah will indeed make things go better for you, both in the material world and in the world-to-come.

How can that be? From Maimonides’ perspective, the Torah is the product of God’s overflow, distilled into human language. Its purpose is to provide guidance in response to the daily decisions that arise in the ongoing challenge of ethical living.

The best choices, of course, are those that are founded on a true understanding of the world.  For Maimonides, the Torah is the source of that knowledge, for the structure of Jewish law corresponds exactly to the very structure of creation. So, that’s why it is true that if you follow the Torah, all will go well for you.

But the problem with this point of view is twofold.

First, if God’s providence could be counted on to rigidly assign suffering to those who had committed the most grievous sins, then perhaps problems like extreme poverty would not be a problem. Such suffering could be rationalized as deserved punishment for wrongdoing. But that is not how the world works.

We know of people who are deeply knowledgeable about Torah who have seen sickness, war, famine, and other calamities. We know righteous people who have suffered.

Second, we know of problems within the Torah text itself that have caused difficulties. For example, one of the precepts of this week’s double portion is the law of the jubilee year:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years — seven times seven years — so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years… and you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family…”[4]

On the face of it, this suggestion sounds like a great idea. The jubilee year would prevent permanent debt and see to it that no one would lose his or her family’s ancestral home. However, in practice, the problem was that in the years leading up to the jubilee, loans to the poor stopped. Why make a loan if it will be forgiven shortly thereafter, without receiving payment?

And the problem with that approach is one we understand: if no one can get credit for activities such as buying and selling land, then even greater harm is caused to the poor. So the rabbis enacted a takanah – a fix – that would see to it that these kinds of problems would be avoided.

So let’s consider our second possibility: this series of blessings and curses is a kind of covenantal language. In the Ancient Near East, covenant agreements would be enacted with a series of ritual gestures. It is a way of guaranteeing that each side of the agreement – in this case, us (the descendants of the Israelites) and God – will follow it.

To give an example, when I was a teacher, I enacted an agreement with my students who had been facing a difficult situation. Their teacher had left midyear and I was asked to take over the classroom. They were unnerved by the changes and needed reassurance. So together we created a covenant that specified what they would do and what I would do. We identified witnesses to our covenant – in the case of the covenant with God and Israel, it is the heaven and the earth that serves as witnesses. In our case, it was the Principal and Vice-principal. And we had blessings and curses. They were really more like incentives and punishments, really. Good behavior was rewarded at the end of semester with cake (their suggestion) and bad behavior was punished with an extra assignment (my suggestion).

The advantage of the covenant model is not that we can predict how life will unfold for us if we follow the commandments. Rather, the purpose of this structure is to remind us that the world does make sense, at the core of it, even in the midst of chaos.

Shabbat Shalom.

Kari Tuling is the rabbi of Temple Beth Israel of Plattsburgh and an adjunct instructor at SUNY Plattsburgh. She will receive her PhD from Hebrew Union College in June.

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[1] Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Vayikra, “Behukotai II” (Jerusalem, Haomanim Press), p. 580.

[2] Ibid., “Behukotai I,” p. 572.

[3] From Hilkhot Teshuvah 9, 1, translated by Isadore Twersky, as quoted in Leibowitz., pp. 577-8.

[4] JPS translation.

Women and The Wall

Over the past few months, I’ve used this space as an opportunity to discuss a what it might mean to “have it all, spiritually” and my own personal struggles with connecting to communal prayer with my family in tow. Rather conspicuously, I avoided fully discussing the role a place can play in helping to lift mundane thoughts into fulfilling prayers. Mainly because whenever I think about it in the context of the country I live, it makes me feel like this.

Love it or hate it, the Kotel provides a powerful symbol of Jewish spirituality (and peoplehood). The Western Wall of our ancient, destroyed Second Temple remains the traditional physical place we direct our prayers. Jewish scholars like Judah HaLevi composed longing poetry about it. Synagogue architects perform miracles to try to ensure our sanctuaries point towards it. Nonetheless, for many Jewish feminists, the Kotel can represent the suppression of prayer, not its ascension.

But last Thursday, Israeli District Court Judge Moshe Sobel upheld a Jerusalem Magistrate Court ruling; he stated that “there is no reasonable suspicion that the [Women of the Wall representatives] violated a prohibition in the law governing holy sites.” This signals a seed change. It validates and empowers women to pray openly, communally, and in traditional prayer garments at the holiest of Jewish sites.

In response to this ruling, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz – the Western Wall’s head rabbi – expressed an important anxiety. He worried that this would turn the Kotel into a site of “antagonism between brothers.” Indeed, I feel the same disquiet about the Western Wall’s recent history; although, perhaps for different reasons. I fear that preventing half of the Jewish population from fully participating in their religion at their holiest site will create animosity between siblings; it is grievous and unjust that sisters cannot use the same avenues to seek spiritual fulfillment as their brothers. Furthermore, in a world in which girls see young women steadily attaining parity with their male peers in almost every other aspect of their lives, how can they love a religion that doesn’t? And why would their mothers encourage them to?

168 Hours

I read a lot of books how to manage one’s time and make the most of one’s life, a question all rabbis need to address at one point or another, both for themselves and their congregants. Most recently I picked up Laura Vanderkam’s 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.

The premise is simple: there are 168 hours in a week. Spending the requisite amount of time working, sleeping, and attending to personal needs, there should still be plenty of hours in there to spend quality time with loved ones, and even squeeze in other passions, like playing an instrument or writing a novel. The trick is to be intentional about one’s time.

I was totally hooked by the premise. However, I soon found myself at odds with Vanderkam’s approach to reorganizing one’s time.

While Vanderkam offers helpful exercises and thoughtful questions about how we spend our time, and shares stories of people with different careers and family structures, her book is overwhelmingly about restructuring one’s life to spend more quality time with one’s family (I inferred from this that she assumed that people without children already have enough time for everything and would never read such a book).

Vanderkam doesn’t offer a disclaimer about writing from a place of privilege and from a particular family structure. She is a freelance writer with a working spouse and professional help raising her children. Many of her suggestions are not going to work for someone who doesn’t fit that mold.

For one thing, one of her major suggestions is to outsource everything that isn’t a “core competency,” not only housework, like cooking and doing the laundry (which I happen to love doing because it’s part of my day-off ritual), but also the less satisfying elements of one’s paying job. If that’s not possible, Vanderkam says, it’s time to think about making bigger changes in one’s career.

In that vein, Vanderkam does ask some really thoughtful questions about what we want to spend our workday doing, and challenges the notion that the hours we spend in the workplace are equivalent to the hours of actual “work” we do. She talks about the hours of our workday that are wasted in activities that don’t utilize our “core competencies” and offers two options: 1) work within your job to restructure your schedule and minimize wasteful activities 2) leave your job and find or create one that makes the best use of your time.

Then she says this:

“How do you get to that position of confidence?….First, if possible, don’t be the only person in your family earning an income. While two-income families have their own issues, they give the person who would be the sole breadwinner more flexibility. When you are your family’s sole means of support, it’s hard to quit a project or take a big career risk that might allow you to focus more on your core competencies” (Vanderkam 97).

I have to say, I took issue with this remark. I was raised in a household where my father was the primary breadwinner. My mom worked (and still works) as a nurse because she finds the work meaningful, but she never had to think twice about cutting back her hours to be a stay-at-home mom (she referred to her weekly 3-11 shift as her “night off”) or quitting a job when it became intolerable. She never had to worry about fighting for health insurance or a retirement plan from her employer, because my father’s employer provided these benefits. She never had to ask for family leave, because she could just cut back her hours.

My life and career are going to look different from my mother’s. And so I was troubled by Vanderkam’s notion that the solution to a career issue is to fall back on one’s spouse. This not only comes from a place of privilege (many of my partnered friends don’t have that luxury either), it perpetuates the notion that a career (particularly a woman’s career, though Vanderkam doesn’t say that explicitly) is about an individual’s personal fulfillment and not financial sustainability.

Like many books and articles coming out on how to “have it all” and/or advance in the workplace, Vanderkam doesn’t address the radical changes that need to happen in our society, in order to give women–and men–the opportunity to pursue fulfilling work while having families or pursuing other passions.

Imagine the “confidence” and freedom women and men of all skill and income levels might gain if we had a higher minimum wage, pay equity between genders, universal health-care, universal preschools, or tax-deductible child-care. We might choose to work more, knowing that our children are in good hands, or less, knowing that our healthcare and childcare needs will be provided of regardless of whether we are part-time or full-time. Imagine how these and other infrastructures might make it possible for everyone to re-imagine how we spend our 168 hours.