"We were slaves..." now what?

[From our Temple Beth El Seder Supplement for this year - full supplement here: Beth El Homepage

“We were slaves in Egypt…” and have vowed, as the cornerstone of Jewish ethics, to prevent slavery wherever we find it.

When do we behave like slaves? Certainly one definition of slavery is the treatment of a person like a commodity, like someone that can be bought and sold.

When we sit in front of a television, or listen to a radio, and consume commercials, we are the product. The programming is designed to deliver us, the audience, to the advertiser, the consumer.

Should we therefore watch no commercial television? Listen to no commercial radio? That would be quite the charge. Instead, let us be conscious of what we consume and when, and whether we are the product or the consumer.

Self-consciousness leads to wisdom and transformation and away from our own states of slavery.

Religion - a path to responsibility

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in the passage below, manages to sum up one of the essential reasons that I became a rabbi – to participate in the project of creating society that fosters personal and communal responsibility. In many ways, I find this passage the antidote to the problems outlined in today’s New York Times piece, The Go Nowhere Generation.

[Thanks to Rabbi Judy Schindler for getting me Rabbi Sacks’ book: The Ethics of Responsibility]

 

Here is the passage:

The first eleven chapters of Genesis are not a mere series of historical narratives. They are a highly structured exploration of responsibility. They begin with two stories about individuals, Adam and Eve, then Cain, followed by two stories about societies, the generation of the Flood and the builders of Babel. The first and last – the tree of knowledge, the tower – are about the failure to honour boundaries: between permitted and forbidden, heaven and earth. The inner two are about violence, individual then collective. They constitute a developmental psychology of the moral sense. First we discover personal responsibility, or freedom to choose. Then we acquire moral responsibility, the knowledge that choice has limits; not everything we can do, may we do. Later we learn collective responsibility: we are part of a family, a community and society and we have a share in its innocence or guilt. Later still, we realize that society itself is subject to higher law: there are moral limits to power.

            All of this is prelude to the appearance of Abraham, who does not emerge in a vacuum. His life is a culmination of all that has gone before. The first words of God – ‘Leave your land, your birthplace and your father’s house’ – are a call to personal responsibility. Abraham is commanded to relinquish everything that leads human beings to see their acts as not their own. The call to Abraham is a counter-commentary to the three great determinisms of the modern world. Karl Marx held that behaviour is determined by structures of power in society, among them the ownership of land. Therefore God said to Abraham, ‘Leave your land.’ Spinoza believed the human conduct is given by the instincts we acquire at birth (genetic determinism). Therefore God said, ‘Leave your place of birth.’ Freud held that we are shaped by early experiences in childhood. Therefore God said, ‘Leave your father’s house.’ Abraham is the refutation of determinism. There are structures of power, but we can stand outside them. There are genetic influences on our behavior, but we can master them. Abraham’s journey is as much psychological as geographical. Like the Israelites in Moses’ day, he is travelling to freedom.

            Abraham exercises moral responsibility by entering into battle, in Genesis 14, to rescue (not his brother, but his brother’s son) Lot. He is his brother’s keeper. He scales the heights of collective responsibility when he prays for the inhabitants of Sodom even though he knows, or suspects, that for the most part they are wicked. He reaches ontological responsibility in the trial of the binding of Isaac, by recognizing the primacy of the divine word over human emotion and aspiration. In each case Abraham responds, and in so doing points the way beyond the failures of previous generations.

            It is now clear why the biblical story does not begin with Abraham. Responsibility is not a given of the human situation. On the contrary, it is all too easy to deny it. It wasn’t my fault (Adam). I don’t see why I shouldn’t do what I wish, not what I ought (Cain). I am responsible for myself, not for others (Noah). We are answerable to no one but ourselves (Babel). The journey to responsibility is long, and there are many temptations to stop short of the final destination. But in the end, there is no real alternative if we are to live our full humanity. Adam loses paradise. Cain is condemned to wander. Noah declines into drunkenness. Babel is left un-built. Responsibility is the condition of our freedom, and we cannot abdicate it without losing much else besides.

            But the story does not end there…Why does it continue? If Abraham is a culmination, what more is there to say? The answer is that humanity is not comprised of individuals alone. We cannot live alone, nor can we create alone. We are social animals. That is why God’s covenant with Abraham must be succeeded by another and more extensive order. Only a nation can build a society, and only a society can bring the divine presence into the public square: its economy and politics, its shared life and collective history. Genesis is about individuals. In the first chapter of Exodus, we encounter for the first time in connection with Abraham’s children the word am, ‘a people’. The question to which the rest of the Pentateuch is an answer is: How does a people, a nation, acquire responsibility?

A Source of Professional Neurosis

Aid an enemy before you aid a friend, to subdue hatred. - Tosefta: Baba Metzia

In this perhaps we have a beautiful teaching that may be the source of much personal difficulty.

What happens when we reach out and place others higher on our priority list than those closest to us?

We cease to be able to maintain our relationships that maintain us as good participants in healthy society.

While a stranger, or an enemy, deserves our attention - both for the sake of healing the world, Tikkun Olam, a central Jewish value, and subduing hatred, as this quote advises - we must heed the wisdom of another Jewish teacher, Hillel. Hillel teaches that in order to save the world we must start with ourselves, our families, and our communities - we must start at the center if we are to succeed outwardly.

Reuse before we recycle

Everyone recycles used paper now - easy to do so with a recycling bin next to our desks. Let’s aim higher and reuse even before we recycle. We can take all those sheets of paper used on only one side, flip them over, and use the other side for scrap. Potential uses for non-confidential used single-sides: re-load them into single-sided printers, use them for art for kids, or, my current favorite, flip them and cut them into useful sizes for note paper - half “letter” size makes great paper to take phone messages on or make lists on!

Teva Tip - the Jewish version of Eco-advice

Do you like beer and wine? Reduce your carbon footprint by selecting drinks that consume less energy
in shipping.

Drink beer from cans since they weigh much less than bottles, and drink domestic wines that hail from closer distances.

When we make small but regular changes in our consumption, we alter the culture of
consumption as well.

And join me for wine and/or beer tomorrow night, Saturday, September 17, at Vintner's Wine in Charlotte - details here.

Healing on the 10th anniversary of 9/11/2001

Ten years since September 11th this Sunday, and still we need healing.

Our world needs healing, our country needs healing, our communities need healing, and we need it too.

Helping others with illnesses and tragedies, facing them ourselves, we know that a decade passed may still leave us needing each other.

Trauma in many cases never diminishes, the terrible tragedies of 9/11 perhaps particularly.  Let us reach out to those who may still suffer from it quietly, feeling that their time for attention has passed as well.

Our world still needs healing from the waves of damage created in response to our tragedies as well.

As we join together in acknowledging those in our midst in need of healing, let us not forget our bigger contexts that require attention as well.

The Voices That Speak to Us - Transfaith in Color Conference

Rabbis Rabbi Freirich Freirich and Judith Schindler

Rabbi Schindler:

As we grow up we all hear voices that influence who we are and how we look at ourselves…the voices of teachers, the voices of the media, the voices of politicians – those of the left and the right, the voices of friends and adversaries, the voices of those who are kind and the voices of those who are cruel.

Throughout this conference, throughout this weekend and throughout this service you have heard different voices…voices of reason and support, voices of experience and wisdom, voices of what some call God.

Today we offer a homily in two voices spoken by two clergy. In Judaism, a Rabbi is not some elevated religious spokesperson for God. The title Rabbi means teacher. Today we offer you more two more voices -- a masculine voice and a feminine voice that bring to the ear some of the spoken and written words from the wellspring of our Jewish tradition from our 4,000 years of history.

 

Rabbi Freirich:

Today we share with you a voice of Genesis.

B’tzelem Elohim, the Hebrew can be translated as “in the Divine image”. What some read to restrict, we read to expand. If all we know about the Divine is that it is not limited, then to be created makes us inherently of infinite variety – humanity comes varied, and we embrace change as we develop who we become.

When we read Genesis we read deeply to use the text to transform ourselves and our communities into places that celebrate variation. We embrace change and evolution as expressions of the infinite image within each of us.

We hear the voice of Genesis that calls us reflections of the limitless.

We speak with the voice of Genesis that cherishes the infinite in all of us.

 

Rabbi Schindler:

In the book of Genesis we hear echoes that call us to be open…to open our hearts, our minds, and our souls. The texts held by the three monotheistic faiths and beyond call us and our communities to embrace the value of hospitality.

In Genesis, as Abraham, at the age of 99, was healing from circumcision “God appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot." Strikingly, when Abraham catches a glimpse of three strangers, three passersby, Abraham jumps up and leaves God's presence to greet three foreigners:

“As soon as he saw them,” the text tells us, “He ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and to offer them food and water and a place to rest their weary bodies and souls.”

Jewish legend teaches that Abraham's tent was open on all four sides so that he could welcome travelers approaching from all directions. Another text tells us: “All the years that Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was alive...the doors of the tent were wide open.... There was blessing in the dough of the bread....There was a light burning from Sabbath eve to the next Sabbath eve.”

Creating welcoming communities, making room for other voices than our own, opening our tents, and our hearts and our minds, enriches and enlightens us. As a text a second century Rabbbi Ben Zoma taught, “Who is wise - the one who learns from every person.” We lift ourselves when we listen and learn from others. May each of you be blessed to surround yourselves with faith communities, with circles of friends and families that offer open hearts, open minds and most importantly, open arms that warm, embrace, appreciate and love you for who you are.

 

Rabbi Freirich:

Today we share with you a voice of Jewish spirituality.

Jewish mysticism demands connection to the world – we do not withdraw from others as we seek a path of deeper meaning, for how we behave with others reflects our deeper selves as well. We cannot become a mystic, without also being a mensch, the Yiddish word for “righteous ethical person”.

Ethical behavior comes from recognizing that deeper meaning in each of us. The tradition of Kabbalah reads the creation of light at the beginning of Genesis as the projection of infinite possibility into our limited world. The Jewish mystic identifies every living being as a bearer of a shard of the Divine, of that original light. When we relate to each other as reflections of the infinite, we must embark on a spiritual journey that opens our eyes, minds, and souls to the beauty in diversity.

When we embark on a journey of self-discovery we pursue a path of deeper meaning. When we recognize everyone else as sharing that traveling path, we open each other to a more meaningful existence.

When we listen with a spiritual heart, and speak with an ethical voice, we participate in the positive transformation of the world.

 

Rabbi Schindler:

Today we share with you a voice of Jewish prayer.

In Judaism, we have are meant to utter 100 blessings a day: when we wake, when we study, when we eat, when we lie down to sleep.  We are meant to be ever appreciative of who we are and what we have.

When we see someone who is different from ourselves, we are meant to say:

Baruch Atah Adonai eloheinu melech haolam m’shaneh habriyot… blessed is our God, who makes all human beings different.

God created every human being differently.  As we seek for those around us to celebrate the spark of the Divine within us, the unique gender that we are, may we always celebrate the Divine within others.     

 

Rabbi Freirich:

Today we share with you a voice of Jewish activism.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, rabbi and activist once said:

“A religious [person is one] who holds God and [person] in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

When our highest ideals come forth in righteous behavior, we listen to all our voices, and insure a world where all will be heard.

 

Rabbi Schindler:

We hope you will hear the voice of community… that has created this conference, that stands up for you and fights for your rights, that works to establish justice for you and for the entire GLBTQ community.  This past April, three clergy, supporting by eight organizations and fifteen other clergy, set out for Washington to legally marry seven gay couples – it was a front cover story.  We will speak, we will preach, we will travel to stand for you and with you – to help your voice calling for equality be heard. We have created in Charlotte, a brand new Interfaith Equality Coalition, that works for GLBT equality.

And finally, of all the voices we hear each day and throughout our lives, we hope you will here the voice of kol dmamah dakah, the still, small voice of God within you.

In the Book of First Kings, the prophet Elijah, believing that he was the last living Israelite prophet and fearing for his life, yearned to see God.  God promised to appear to him. There was a great wind that rent the mountains, but God was not in the wind.  There was an earthquake that shook the earth beneath his feet, but God was not in the earthquake. Then there was a fire, but God was not in the fire. Then there was a kol demama daka, a still small voice. And God was there.

May you find God inside you. May you hear God in that still, small voice. May you see God in the gender that you have become or are becoming and always were.  May you know that you are created b’tzelem elohim – “in the image of the infinite”.

 

Rabbi Freirich:

May all of our voices rise together, painting a tapestry of infinite colors, transforming the world to a place that appreciates diversity, and welcomes us all.

 

Stonewall Commemoration at Temple Beth El

What an event Temple Beth El hosted last night at Temple Beth El - a commemoration of the struggles and progress made since Stonewall with beautiful talks from ministers who lived through each of the five decades since Stonewall; beautiful video of and testimonies from the same-sex couples who got married in Washington DC with Charlotte-area clergy in April; and the kick-off of the Interfaith Equality Coalition.

I was honored to be a small part of this amazing gathering, and here is what I contributed, a closing prayer. Thanks as always to Rabbi Benjamin Arnold for introducing me to Rabbi Marley's interpretation of this verse from Psalms, and then setting the Hebrew to Bob Marley's tune too.

Rabbi of Last Resort

My grandmother Connie Freirich (z”l - may her memory be for a blessing) was mother of four young kids in the 1950’s on Long Island, New York. During their early childhood Connie went to the nearest synagogue to talk to the rabbi about joining and giving her kids a Jewish education. As she chatted with the rabbi they turned to the subject of her husband’s, my grandfather Jerry’s, profession, which happened to be the business of meat packaging - corned beef and pastrami primarily. The rabbi asked my grandmother if this was a kosher business, which it wasn’t, and then told her that my grandfather would have to change his business to join their synagogue.

My grandmother never went back to a synagogue until my Bar Mitzvah, probably thirty years later, and only went to synagogue after that when she absolutely couldn’t avoid it.

Almost all of us know a story like this, one where someone went into a synagogue or Jewish communal institution and had some experience that meant they would never show up there again.

Jews, people interested in Judaism, show up to synagogues and Jewish institutions as an act of bravery - almost all of us, including me, wonder whether we are “Jewish enough” to enter that synagogue and talk to that rabbi. How stalwart we must be to stride forth into a place and talk to people that we feel will offer us guilt or rejection because we never measure up.

Considering all of this, I must make every effort as a rabbi to welcome people into Judaism, because I could be that rabbi, the one that everyone talks about, who sent my grandmother packing. Every moment a person takes the risk of engaging Judaism seems like it might be their last encounter, and it just might be if we act as we have for the last century, using guilt and obligation, instead of compassion and connection, as incentive for being Jewish.

When we take the risk to venture into relationship with Judaism, we do so because we need something, otherwise why take the risk? If I have the opportunity to meet that need, I must engage each person expressing that need with caring, thought, and respect.

Judaism makes life better - more joyful, more thoughtful, more meaningful, more caring, more connected - so let’s run on our strengths, let’s share them. I work to leave the negative incentives behind, and recognize that every time I encounter a person interested in Judaism, I may be that rabbi of last resort, the one who makes the difference, the one who opened Jewish communal life up for another person, the one who says, “You’re Jewish, welcome.”

A great letter from the Swedish Jewish community

"Xenophobia affects us all"

We, in the Jewish communities in Sweden look with dismay at how the Muslim and Roma minorities are being treated in Europe. Our parents or grandparents who were put into ghettos by the Nazis are still living in Europe when you build physical walls around areas where Roma live in poverty. The experience of persecution we have inherited is a constant reminder to us to consider others, whenever we see how a group are being discriminated against. All human beings are equal and all people have the right to be treated as individuals, regardless of whether they are Muslims, Jews, Gypsies, Roma, Travellers, homosexuals, or whatever their religion, sexual orientation or origin may have been. It's easy to say this and say again, however, it is much harder to raise their voice when you see the "iron fist" raised against groups other than those to which the majority themselves belong. Maybe it is, consciously or unconsciously, easier to think that it's nice that it is not me they're after. But this way of thinking can lull us into a false and short-term sense of security. Muslims in Europe are portrayed as a threat to all civilization. Switzerland legislates against minarets and wherever a mosque is to be built there are the strongest protests. Even in Sweden, we have discussions about immigration in an unpleasant way that has come to be associated with the Muslim minority. If the phrase "never again" that has been constantly repeated is sincere, we must now see racism for what it is and stand up against it. A lot of books and educational material has been produced in Sweden for us to learn from the oppression and murder of the Jewish people. But how do we as a Jewish minority learn to feel safe when we seethat the increasing discrimination against Muslims in Sweden and Europe, and the persecution of the Roma has resulted in, at best, little protest? Repression affects us all, always, regardless of whoever is the victim of it. Because, if we do not protest when groups other than we ourselves are being persecuted, the perpetrators may conclude that, in the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemцller, "When the time came for me, there was no one left to protest..."

 

LENA-POSNER KЦRЦSI, ordfцrande Judiska Centralrеdet

ALF LEVY, ordfцrande Judiska Fцrsamlingen i Stockholm

GEORG BRAUN, ordfцrande Judiska Fцrsamlingen i Gцteborg

FRED KAHN, ordfцrand Judiska Fцrsamlingen i Malmц

Leaders of the Jewish Councils in Sweden.

 From Svenska Dagblat, "Frдmlingsfientlighet berцr oss alla" 23 September 2010

More about what religion really teaches

A great poem by Yehuda Amichai...

 

The Place Where We are Absolutely Right 

From the place where we are absolutely right
flowers will never grow in the spring.
The place where we are absolutely right
is trampled, hardened
like a courtyard. 

However
doubts and loves
make the world rise like dough
like a molehill, like a plow.
And a whisper will be heard
in the place where a home was destroyed.