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Eulogy for Albert Vorspan

This Eulogy for Albert Vorspan was shared with permission from Rabbi David Stern:

I am standing here today because of a sacred pact between my father, Rabbi Jack Stern, of blessed memory, and his best friend, Al Vorspan: long ago, they solemnly pledged to each give the eulogy at the other’s funeral.

Of course, the mutual nature of this covenant made it both impossible and elegant – after all, the wronged party would never know if the other had reneged first, and whoever reneged second had the best possible excuse. Or, as Al once wrote of their arrangement, “Only one of us will have to deliver, but we both have to prepare.”

And so I am here, along with my sister Elsie and brother Jon, to uphold the Stern family’s end of the bargain, with absolutely no hope of fulfilling this task as my father would, nor as Al did so beautifully for Dad eight years ago. After all, Al and Dad did have the advantage of preparation. Every time Al would crack up my father (and himself) with a story, Al would eventually catch his breath and say: “Jack, you gotta use that one.”

We never found an actual Vorspan file among my father’s papers – Dad never wrote the punchlines down. What he did write, every time he and Al would have lunch in their later years, is a list, in advance, on a notecard, of everything he wanted to make sure they would cover: politics, Israel, rabbis, Reform Judaism, all Judaism, children, grandchildren, and of course, their regular dissection of the New York Times op-ed page as if it were a daf of Talmud.

Dad didn’t save the note cards or record the jokes or write down Al’s fierce wisdom. He did what we all do – carry Al around in our hearts, even as we do this day, even as we will from this day. Because for a spirit as indelible and indomitable as Al Vorspan’s, you really don’t need a manila folder.

He was a liberator – not of the poor finally from their poverty, nor of the hungry from their hunger, nor of African Americans finally from the shackles of American racism, though God knows he tried.

He was a liberator because he freed the Torah from the ark, the prophets from the quiet pages of bound Bibles, the light of justice from the dainty ner tamid. He simply refused to leave the beating heart of Judaism trapped inside stained-glass windows or musty halls.

He brought Jeremiah to the Capitol and Isaiah to the jail cell in St. Augustine and Micah to the conference table at the RAC and he did it with a pipe in his teeth and a smile on his face and those expressive hands and with his bald head shining like a beacon for social justice. He was brave and smart and eloquent and magnetic beyond measure – my mom used to say Al Vorspan made social justice sexy.

But it wasn’t always sexy, and it was rarely easy. Rabbis of my generation and younger have this fantasy that justice work was simpler in the good old days – that before Ronald Reagan came along, every Jew was a New Deal Democrat, and every congregation floated in a tranquil sea of homogeneous blue.

But as Al reminded us time and again, it was never easy. It wasn’t easy when the rabbi in Alabama asked Al not to march with Dr. King in 1955 because the Jewish community there feared the reprisals of the White Citizens’ Council; it wasn’t easy in every Reform congregation that Al and Rabbi Eugene Lipman traveled to in the 1950’s to introduce the notion of a Social Action Committee; it wasn’t easy at the 1961 Biennial, when after a fierce floor fight, the Union voted to establish the Religious Action Center, and Al Vorspan was for once speechless, and he retreated in relief to the parking lot where he broke down and cried.

The fact that he was ceaselessly charming did not make him any less courageous. The fact that he was not a rabbi did not make him any less a person of faith, and his faith was profound. For him a Judaism of justice was a Judaism of substance and sacred promise, a Judaism that mattered; its Torah a Torah that dared enter the marketplace and the workplace and the factory and the fields of Viet Nam; a faith that Judaism was a force for redemption, even when things seemed irredeemable. Even when his critiques of the America he loved or the Israel he loved were most harsh, or when he came close to despair after the American election of 2016, that sense of hope remained his calling card.

We have taken to calling him a giant. That is testimony to his defining influence for the past 65 years in shaping Reform Judaism into a justice movement – the Reform movement simply would not be what it is today without him.

And it is testimony to his unquenchable charisma – he could hold a room like nobody’s business, and he had a command of the English language and a gift for delivery that would literally quicken your pulse when you listened to him. It’s a good thing he didn’t become a rabbi, because he would have put the rest of us out of business.

But to call him a giant is also a disservice, because what made Al Vorspan Al Vorspan was his unique combination of prophetic zeal and deep humanity – the genuine care for whomever was in front of him – a roomful of us or one at a time.

He understood the fear of that rabbi in Alabama; he respected our movement leaders when they challenged him. He believed in the power of community, and established the Commission on Social Action and congregational Social Action Committees across the country because he knew that the Torah of justice belonged on both sides of the aisle, where the people are. He combined rebuke with love, a challenge to conscience with a hand around your shoulder.

He stood in front of lots of packed houses, but I am guessing that for most of us here, the enduring image is of Al standing close, leaning in, laughing hard, listening well. There was no hypocritical distance between his care for the world and the care he showed for his own family, or for this Reform movement family. He was at home on the ramparts, and at home in the warmth of a quiet Shabbat in the Berkshires. If he was a giant, he was a giant who remembered your name.

We have taken to calling him a prophet. That is testimony to his remarkable courage and ethical compass. But as Aron Hirt-Manheimer wrote in his beautiful remembrance this week, no prophet was ever as funny as Al Vorspan – although if Jeremiah and Amos did tell stories like Al’s, we can understand why their jokes didn’t end up in the Bible. And of course, nobody took greater joy in a Vorspan story than Vorspan.

If you want to laugh until you cry, read Al’s blog post (July 25, 2016), called “Sex and The Retirement Home,” his response to an article earlier that month in the New York Times about how the Hebrew Home in Riverdale had started to encourage sexual activity among residents. I have made a career choice not to recount any of it here.

Al was a beloved mentor, teacher and friend to generations of Reform rabbis, stirring the fires of social justice activism in countless CCAR members and the communities we serve. He made us better every day, and it’s my honor to extend sympathies to all of Al’s family on behalf of our family of rabbis.

He was a teacher for generations; a friend for the ages; a beloved brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather; and above all else and every day, Shirley’s steadfast companion. If Al was magic, Al and Shirley were more so; she had his number and she had his heart. May the artist and the activist be together again in whatever Hillsdale the heavens have to offer.

Some 1500 years ago, the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 3a) told us of Rabbi Yosei, who went to pray in the ruins of Jerusalem. Elijah the prophet came and gently rebuked the sage for praying in the ruins, a practice the rabbis considered to be both physically and spiritually dangerous. Elijah teaches Yosei that though the ruins may have felt safe and familiar, he should have prayed in the open, out on the road, out in the world.

Al Vorspan was our Elijah, summoning us beyond the ruins of parochialism, of paralysis, of self-righteousness, of despair – calling us to bring our prayers and deeds onto the road and into a world desperately in need of healing.

Two years ago, at the age of 93, Al Vorspan wrote a dialogue he called “The Debate in My Head,” a conversation between what he called his Inner Realist and his Inner Idealist, both characters labeled “Me” on the page. Eventually, the Inner Realist says: “It’s time to disengage, old man. Turn it off. Exit gracefully. The game is over for you. Cash in your chips, turn off MSNBC, read that book by Amos Oz, write a memoir for your grandkids.”

But the Inner Idealist comes back with the account of Al’s Navy experience in the Pacific during World War II, when his ship was hit by a Japanese bomber outside of Okinawa, and how amidst the wounded and the dead, Al’s fear gave way to a sense of courage and duty. Then the Inner Idealist effectively wins the debate with these words:

“Who are you to decide the game is over? The truth is, the biggest game is just beginning. And it will need all hands on deck. Young, old, blue state, red state. People need to wake up, storm their congressman’s office, demand the America they once took for granted: humane, democratic, fair, welcoming. We need to wake up and demand an America which does not place the environment and the planet at risk; an America which does not comfort the comfortable at the expense of the weak and the poor; an America that is once again a light to the world!”

Classic Vorspan: admitting that it’s a struggle, and then soaring in hope and inspiration to win the day. At 93 and 95 and every day, he was a prophet who laughed, a giant who remembered you, an Elijah who summoned us to our better selves.

We will miss him greatly, but the Vorspan file is secure and enduring: when our own standards start to slip, we will remember his integrity; when we begin to retreat from the heat of the day, we will gain courage from his compass; when we start to take ourselves too seriously, we will remember how he made justice and joy sing together. He has left us a legacy of shining conscience and deep love.

Sail on, sweet sailor, brave spirit. May your example ever light our way.

Albert Vorspan, zecher tzaddik livracha – may the memory of the righteous abide for blessing. Amen.

—

This Eulogy for Albert Vorspan was shared with permission from Rabbi David Stern. Rabbi Stern is the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and serves Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas.

 

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News

When Vision Replaces Anger

I’ve been thinking about darkness.

In part, that is because there has literally been so much darkness during these last several weeks. Even as January arrives, the nights are still long. We are in the dark far more than the light.

But there has also been a different kind of darkness in the air lately. It’s the darkness that goes along with the disruption of the way we live our lives.

The stock market has got the jitters. Immigrants are corralled into makeshift camps. American foreign policy seems confused. A government shutdown throws people into peril.

And, to be honest, the president can’t stop tweeting. The messages often arrive before the sun has risen. He sits in the dark. He is angry and that scowl of his casts a shadow over our land.

I know I’m not the first to note the president’s behavior. A few weeks ago, The Washington Post described his mood in these words, “Trump was mad – steaming, raging mad.”

The particular circumstance barely matters because, as we have come to know, the president is often angry. That is how he was during the election process when he found ways to insult political opponents. That is pretty much how he has continued to conduct himself in office. One of his employees from as far back as the 1980’s remembers, “the emotional core around which Donald Trump’s personality circles is anger.”

No wonder I’ve been thinking about darkness. It surrounds us.

But it needn’t be so.

Although anger can sometimes motivate us to action, there are other ways to imagine our lives.

I am thinking, for example, about the ways in which various American leaders have moved us to action in the past.

The year is 1984. Ronald Reagan is running for re-election. One of his campaign ads strikes the tone that would lead him back to the White House. The commercial featured images of Americans going to work under a rising sun. The text read, “It’s morning again in America.”

Whether or not you voted for Reagan, you can’t help but feel how he communicated with the country. There was light. There was a sense of purpose and unity.

Much the same holds true for John Kennedy who spoke about a “new frontier” when he ran for president. Kennedy was all about energy and change. He didn’t condemn the country. He rather inspired Americans with his challenge, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

There was darkness in America when Kennedy was president. He himself was assassinated, but the tone of his leadership inclined towards the light.

Which is what can also be said about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. whom we celebrate this month with a day devoted to his accomplishments.

Dr. King lived in tumultuous times. Tear gas, bullets, and threats were his reality. But the amazing thing about him as a leader is that he never let anger get the better of him. As dark as it might be around him, Dr. King offered hope.

The night before he died King declared that he had been to the mountain top and seen the Promised Land. What’s more, he promised his followers that, even if he did not get there with them, they would get to the Promised Land.

His very last public words that evening were an inspiration. As dark as the next day would be, King affirmed, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

There was no darkness in Dr. King’s dream.

In fact, that is what makes his most famous public moment so memorable. It was August 28, 1963. Over 250,000 people had assembled in Washington for a huge march on behalf of freedom. A series of speakers had said just about all that could be said regarding the politics of the matter when Dr. King came to the podium.

He didn’t talk about pain or fear. He just led those present and the nation by proclaiming he had a dream. He saw a better world. He saw a transformed world. There would come a time when everyone would be able to say, “Free at last. Free at last, Great God, all mighty. We ae free at last.”

That is leadership. That is vision.

It’s not dark and angry. It’s bright and whole. It’s the kind of “dream” our country needs as 2019 gets underway.

—

Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro has served congregations in Springfield, MA, White Plains, NY, and Toronto.  He is also the editor of Gates of Shabbat: A Guide for Observing Shabbat, published by CCAR Press in 1996.

 

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News

On Global Jewish Responsibility: Putting the Olam in Tikkun Olam

This is an excerpt from the essay, “On Global Jewish Responsibility: Putting the Olam in Tikkun Olam,” by Ruth W. Messinger and Rabbi Rick Jacobs from Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Social Justice, edited by Rabbi Seth L. Limmer and Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner (CCAR Press, 2019).

B’reishit bara Elohim, in the beginning, God didn’t create the Land of Israel or the Jewish people. No, God created a wondrous universe, teeming with beauty, complexity, and possibility. Within this incomplete world, God created human beings to partner with God in shaping a world of justice and compassion. The sphere of divine concern includes not only the triumphs and trials of our people. Its reach is global, extending to all who inhabit the planet.

The fundamental question for this chapter has in many ways already been asked and answered, debated by Rabbinic sages and subjected to further discussion by contemporary writers. We ask it anew today as Jews work to find themselves in a rapidly changing twenty-first-century landscape. Are Jews responsible only to other Jews and only for their well-being, or do we have a responsibility to the other and the stranger, whether they live in our community or across the globe? Although scholars and leaders—and the members of the Jewish community more broadly—have had differing answers and differing priorities, if we take the texts at their word, if we take seriously our responsibility to the ger, “the stranger,” and define that notion broadly, recognizing the many strangers among whom we live and who live among us, then we have our answer. As Jews, we have a foundational responsibility, a moral obligation, to act not only for ourselves, our families, and our people, but also for the global community.

All [the] provisions from the Bible through the Rabbinic period provide the foundation, the rationale, the “how-to manual” of the Rabbinic decree that we must be an or lagoyim, “a light unto the nations,” a call that animates much of Jewish life yet today.

Then the next sets of questions loom: Why do we have this responsibility, and how has it played out over time? How broadly must we take this charge? What kinds of actions are we compelled to take?

When we are instructed to care for non-Jews as well as Jews for the sake of peace, do we understand that it is incumbent upon us to reach out across lines of difference and division because that is our moral obligation or because it will allow us to live more safely in the world?

Where can this caring, this assumption of responsibility, occur in our own communities, where we live side by side with people of diverse backgrounds? In our country, where the Constitution protects individual rights, yet we know that we do not always live up to its precepts, and there are times and places when we need to be present for those whose rights are being denied? In Israel, where the struggle of different populations to live side by side raises these issues at practical, humanitarian, and geopolitical levels?

Or, most significantly for this chapter, building on what has gone before, are we to understand that we need to extend our care and our concern to the rest of the world?

Be a force for good in the world: any time we fail to act, for any persons, whatever their relationships to us, when we know that they are in need, we are to be held accountable for whatever goes wrong.

And, whether we are responding locally or globally, there is the question of what response we are asked to make.

So, we are called upon to act, to do what we can, both at home and abroad, to be that light unto the nations even—or perhaps, particularly—in hard times. We must pursue justice at home, in our own communities, in our own country, in Israel, and throughout the world….Only in these ways can we take up fully our intended role on this planet, helping to create a world in which we toil for equity and fairness and hope that encourages others so that more and more of us each day are working for the good of the entire globe.

—

Ruth W. Messinger is the Global Ambassador of  American Jewish World Service.  Rabbi Rick Jacobs is the President of the Union for Reform Judaism. 

Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Social Justice is now available from CCAR Press.

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News

#lovetriumphs

As the fires still raged, I took a break to marry Lindsey Cooper and Laura Berman down on the Santa Monica beach (leaving our Fire Response Efforts in the able hands of my partner, Rabbi Julia Atlas Weisz, and her amazing team).

Under the beautiful setting sun, with the Santa Monica Pier roller coaster lit up nearby (reminding us that life by definition is a roller coaster of ups, downs, and spinnings round and round), the two brides, made beautiful by the LOVE that burns within them, celebrated joyously in their relocated ceremony (originally planned for Malibu but moved 24 hours before). Looking at their love-drunk faces as she broke the glass–a reminder of the destruction our people endured–I was inspired by these lessons:

  1. That love will triumph over hate (and may this love motivate us to stop the cynical turning back the clock now underway on marriage equality and LGBTQ2 rights)
  2. That with LOVE, we can endure the most disappointing destruction (of our homes, our sense of safety, the loss of life, and the intentional, purposeful, and insensitive comments of the one who should be Healer in Chief)
  3. That a LOVING community transcends distance (thanks to all who helped call and check up on our congregants). May we continue to turn that LOVING energy toward reaching out and helping all affected by the fires and shootings, regardless of where they live, how much they make, their skin color, national origin, religion, etc.
  4. That an embrace of LOVE, like that of de Toledo High School, helps us endure the loss of homes, the evacuation of sister congregations, the burning of buildings (at camp JCA Shalom Camp, Hess Kramer, Ilan Ramon Day School, and elsewhere), and the burning loss of our sense of security
  5. That LOVE burning brightly can motivate us to face down and ultimately stop hate-honed shootings, like those at the country western dance bar, Badlands, the synagogue in Squirrel Hill, at Kroger’s in Kentucky (because the shooter couldn’t get into the predominantly black Church), and at the churches and concerts and schools and malls and <insert latest location of mass shooting here>. LOVE can triumph over this kind of violence-producing hate, even if it has been honed by those in power.

So Mazel Tov, Laura and Lindsey:

May your passion for each other burn brightly for 120 years, inspiring us to reach out with LOVE to the evacuated, the shot-at, and the downtrodden, dispossessed, unloved, and everyone else, who like you and me are deserving of living with LOVE in safety and hope.

—

Rabbi Paul Kipnes serves Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, CA.  This blog was originally posted on paulkipnes.com

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News

Two Questions to Ask as We Reflect on Trudeau’s Apology

On Nov. 7, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized on Canada’s behalf for turning away the MS St. Louis from the Halifax harbour almost 80 years ago. Canada refused to accept the 907 shipboard Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 — as did Cuba and the United States. While some passengers eventually found refuge elsewhere, over 200 were returned to Nazi Germany’s clutches, to be murdered in the Holocaust. Canada has said little over the decades, at least officially. Now that is changing.

The timing of the prime minister’s apology – two days prior to the commemoration of Kristallnacht– is significant. The “Night of Broken Glass” — Nov. 9, 1938, when the Nazis and their henchmen rampaged through German Jewish neighbourhoods, destroying buildings and lives – made Hitler’s intentions clear. Just months later, the St. Louis and its precious cargo took off from Hamburg, a ship of Jews in search of safe harbour that would prove beyond reach. And worse: a harbinger of what was to come.

As we reflect on Trudeau’s apology, we might ask two questions: First, can a government apologize in any meaningful way for such a massively fatal dereliction of responsibility? After all, however sincere the regret, how can words make up for the deaths of innocents so casually flung back into harm’s way?

The short answer: an apology, yes; a meaningful one, not so likely. But there’s a fuller answer, too. There are different, sometimes unexpected, ways to acknowledge past evils other than through words. They too can constitute an apology.

I understood the compelling nature of non-verbal apologies best while wandering the streets of Berlin some years ago. I was stunned that the city’s architecture and buildings revealed all of 20th century Berlin’s history — literally all of it. Nothing of Berlin’s modern past is erased or hidden, save for what was destroyed during the Second World War — and even some of that has been restored. It’s all there, out in the open.

Berlin’s architecture conveys the message that a city and its people, once complicit with evil, need not pretend the past away. And, in fact, such a city is best served by preserving what was, rather than hiding it. Better to recall than to repress, better to know what happened than to forget or destroy it. Berlin’s preserved physical history conveys in architectural form much the same lesson that the Talmud records about the profound relationship between forgetting the past and the doing of evil. That is, the one who represses his past, especially its painful ignominies, is the most prone to committing evil.

But there is the second question we must ask about Canada’s apology: how do we determine if an apology is genuine? This is perhaps more difficult to assess, but I’d venture one thought: if Trudeau takes the apology seriously, he will have done his own homework. His own reading and lots of it, his own thinking. It won’t hurt, too, for the prime minister to know what the Talmud teaches with regard to sincerity: that which is a genuine product of the heart, once articulated, can touch the heart of the other.

The evil done to the St. Louis passengers 79 years ago is not unrelated to the anti-Semitism of today. In the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, it is essential for the prime minister and his government to remember that. And of course, there is a clear link between the most recent manifestation of Jew-hatred and its most pernicious manifestation – the desire to rid the world of Israel. Would that Trudeau remind his countrymen and women that, had there been a Jewish state in 1939, the St. Louis would have sailed there — and found refuge rather than refusal.

Reconciliation begins with remembering evil. If he gets it right, and follows through with appropriate action, Trudeau’s apology can be very meaningful – even all these decades later.

—

Rabbi John Moscowitz is Rabbi Emeritus at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Canada. This article was originally posted by the Canadian Jewish News.

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News

A Prayer: Standing with The Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh

In light of yesterday’s horrific violence at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, we share this prayer that Rabbi Kedar wrote for her congregation.

Be strong and let your heart have courage

Psalm 31:25

God, hear our prayer.

With horror we bear witness to

the evil within our midst.

We prayer that our broken hearts

do not become embittered.

Let us not give in to cynicism and despair.

May we find comfort in our faith and in our community,

strengthen our resolve

to be messengers of peace and healing

and bring comfort to the broken hearted.

We pray for the soul of our country.

May violence be no more.

May the way of our land be for good and not for evil.

May the words we speak, inspire.

May our outstretched arms, embrace.

May our minds learn tolerance and understanding.

Strike the inclination to do evil from

the hearts of the wicked.

Empower us for good, for life, for love.

God, we pray for the children.

The children, our greatest gift,

the hope in our hearts, the delight of lives,

our future and legacy.

The children, dear God.

Innocent and true.

Our children, pure in their beauty,

proof of goodness and miracle.

Our children

The children, dear God.

May we be strong and may our hearts have courage.

October 27, 2018

18 Heshvan 5778

Rabbi Karyn Kedar, Senior Rabbi of Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Deerfield, IL, is widely recognized as an inspiring leader who guides people in their spiritual and personal growth. She is the author of many books, including Omer: A Counting.

Categories
gender equality News Social Justice

King David, Bill Clinton, and Progressives’ Culpability for Sexual Misconduct

This summer, I listened to Professor Orit Avnery at the Shalom Hartman Institute, describing King David’s wrongdoing with Bat-Sheva. Not only adultery or even the King’s skullduggery in consigning his loyal soldier, Bat-Sheva’s husband Uriah, to death in a misbegotten battle. David is also guilty of sexual misconduct: He leverages his power to fulfill his sexual desires with a subject, meaning that the David-Bat-Sheva liaison cannot be described as fully consensual.

While the Bible casts the centuries of disaster that follow as divine punishment, we may view those catastrophes as natural results of David’s misdeeds. We are not surprised that David’s older sons, born to him and his wife, resent his favoritism toward Solomon, born of the adulterous liaison. Moreover, the king’s disloyalty to his troops might logically lead to low morale in the ranks – and, ultimately, military defeat.[i]

Listening to Avnery, and considering King David, I could not help but think of Bill Clinton.

Twenty years ago, we learned that the married President of the United States had an apparently-consensual sexual liaison with a 22-year old woman working as a White House intern. President Clinton’s supporters, myself included, however scandalized by his marital infidelity, spent much more energy resisting his impeachment than examining the corrosive impact his behavior would wreak our society.

We were wrong when we determined that Clinton’s presidential leadership on women’s issues was more important and impactful than his personal conduct toward women. Sexual relations between a 45-year-old President and a 22-year-old intern constitute sexual misconduct resulting from an extreme power disequilibrium. Like David with Bat-Sheva, the power disequilibrium raises a question of whether Clinton’s relations with Lewinsky could truly be consensual. Failing to call out the President’s wrongdoing, we not only facilitated the vilification of a young woman, and worse for Clinton’s other victims, we conspired with President Clinton to silence discussion of powerful men’s sexual misbehavior for nearly two decades. Only after Hillary Clinton was defeated in her own presidential election by a man who shamelessly bragged about sexual misconduct, American progressives finally opened our eyes to the widespread degradation of women and girls – and sometimes, boys and men – by powerful men who victimize those under their control. President Clinton’s sexual misconduct and our averted attention enabled two decades of widespread sexual abuse. The perpetrators, we now know, are just as likely to support progressive priorities for women’s rights in the public sphere as to oppose them. Had we insisted that President Clinton face the consequences of his actions, America might have held Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, Mario Batali, Louis C.K., and their likes accountable far earlier, sparing untold numbers of victims. And we might never have allowed for an atmosphere in which a man who bragged of grotesque sexual violence could nevertheless be elected President of the United States.

Russ Douthat is a conservative columnist and devoted Catholic. Not long ago, he wrote, “The Catholic Church needs leaders who can purge corruption even among their own theological allies.”[ii] What Douthat says about theological allies goes for political and ideological partners as well. We who did not hold President Clinton to account are vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy when we seek the ouster on similar grounds of a president whose policies we abhor. And vice versa.

We have reason for hope. When Sen. Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers were credibly accused of sexual misconduct, both were forced out of office by colleagues on their own side of the political aisle.

Now, we must acknowledge what we have known since David ruled in Jerusalem some 3000 years ago: A leader’s private sins can bring grave consequences to a nation. Many of us have been silent co-conspirators in the past. Others are today. Let us all shed our ideologies when we evaluate the costs of a leader’s private sins. We must hold all the powerful people in our society accountable – not only in politics and religion, but also in industry, media, entertainment, sports, education, and all places of employment. Then, perhaps, we will be credible partners in bringing an end to sexual misconduct, wherever it occurs.

[i] 2 Samuel 11-12, as taught by Orit Avnery, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, July 4, 2018.
[ii] Russ Douthat, “What Did Pope Francis Know?,” The New York Times, August 28, 2018, accessed on September 2, 2018 at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/opinion/pope-francis-catholic-church-resign.html?rref=%2Fbyline%Fross-douthat&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection.

—

Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas, and is a member of the CCAR Board of Trustees.

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High Holy Days News

Creation: Fed up with Tohu

I am honored and excited to be the new editor at the CCAR Press. Under the leadership of Rabbi Hara Person, I will be listening to your ideas, reading what your write, and working with you to create books, apps, and online learning opportunities!

Think about me as your editor, liturgist, and teacher.

As I did for the last six years, I will spend the upcoming High Holidays at a JCC in Chevy Chase-Bethesda, Maryland, where I work as a cantorial soloist. Each year, I deliver the sermon on Erev Rosh haShanah. This is a snippet of the (oh, too many words) I am going to share on that Bimah:

 

I, personally, try to laugh that laughter more often these days. It’s a laughter that is forgiving towards myself, towards the human beings around me, and towards this entire mess of our chaotic world. I try to internalize that all we have is a little Torah (a book written after all,  on the skin of a dead cow) in order to help us figure out together the nature of this mystical creation, and write together the Torah of our lives, Torat Hayim, the Torah of Life, a living Torah.

In other moments, I, like so many others, grow impatient, and then I write poems (S. Pilz (2018): Creation. Unpublished.) like this one:

Creation: Fed up with Tohu

What if in the beginning
Something did get consumed?
With black coal a universe got written
Dancing, twisting, whimpering, crawling,
What if in the beginning,
Something was broken.

You and I, we shine together.

What if we were to learn
How to calmly tame our fire?
Will we then crush gently,
And rise,
With a kiss?

 

Most of our time on earth, it seems to me, gets spent trying to figure out how to live this life right here and now. We are getting used to ourselves and to others. We build relationships, co-creating our own entire little universes. This way, all of us re-create and change the world in every single second. This, now, is a moment when the world gets re-created by us. And now. At every single moment of our lives.

And in these moments, as all of us are sitting here together, creating a universe of prayer, Torah, singing, learning, the order of prayer, reflection, and beauty, I want to share yet another poem with you, a second poem by the American writer Mary Oliver (M. Oliver (1992): New and Selected Poems, from “The Summer Day”, p. 94.) who wrote the poem with which I opened my sermon:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

—

Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz earned a doctorate from the department of Rabbinic Literature at Potsdam University, Germany; she holds Rabbinic Ordination from Abraham Geiger College, Germany. Prior to joining the CCAR Press as editor, Sonja taught Jewish liturgy, worship, and ritual at HUC-JIR, NY; the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University; and in many congregational settings. She served as a visiting rabbi and cantorial soloist in congregations in Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and the US.

Categories
High Holy Days News

It’s Not the Apocalypse

Many people are speaking like it’s the end of days.

We know these people.  Sometimes, we are these people.  The way our world is talking has escalated our existence from the already wearisome struggles of everyday life to the exasperating level of world-ending scenarios.  But sometimes what seems like an apocalypse is just everyday life.

Jewish history is filled with people predicting the apocalypse.  Amongst the first of those was the last of our Prophets, Malachi.  His final prophecy warned of the approaching day of Divine judgment that like a “smelter’s fire” would purge Israel: Who can endure the day of this arrival, Malachi wonders.  Doom and gloom, destruction and suffering, are the imagery of the prophet’s visions.  Like many prophetic peers, Malachi saw his own time period as the literal “end of days”.

But Malachi’s 4th Century was hardly the end of days… in fact, it was the beginning of a wonderful period of expansion of Jewish thought, literature, and even political power!  The prophet’s perceived apocalypse in fact was the dawn of a far better day than he ever imagined.

Our Rabbis actually lived through a far more violent time than did Malachi: they were eyewitness to multiple failed insurrections in Judea, massacres in the Jewish diaspora, and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Despite all this, our Rabbis couldn’t have cared less about any apocalypse.  They needed simply to get through the day, to find a viable way for Jewish values and Jewish life to continue.

Our Rabbis read Malachi, especially the prophet’s final vision.  In fact, they maintained Malachi’s message, but steered it away from a prophecy of doom towards an oracle of hope.  They shifted our communal focus from a violence-ridden apocalyptic end-of-days to a messianic age of hope and glory.  How did they do so?  They aggrandized Malachi’s image of Elijah returning as the herald of an edenic age.  As a result of this Rabbinic revolution, Elijah has since stood as the paradigm of possibility for a world not only repaired, but perfected.  Thus do we make room for the hopeful optimism of Elijah every Passover, and intone only the positive part of the picture painted by Malachi: Behold, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the great and awesome day of God.  Elijah shall turn the hearts of parents to children and the hearts of children to parents.

Our Rabbis pivoted from awaiting a day doom towards working for a season of hope.  We need to do the same.

And there’s no better time than right now.  Our High Holy Day season, centered around the possibility of turning towards our better selves, makes clear that the choice we should make in these troubled times is to do everything within our power to restore hope and promise to our world.  In fact, the premise of the High Holy Days could never be more clearly stated than the very words of Malachi: Turn back to Me, and I will turn back to you, declares Adonai.  Our entire season of turning helps us focus first our intentions and then our deeds so that we can reorient our lives towards the better people we know we can be.

There’s no doubt there were troubles the in Malachi’s time, or in the age of our Rabbis.  And I would be the last to say there isn’t a lot broken with our world today, both here in America and overseas in Israel.  But especially in difficult days, Judaism reminds us we must make a powerful choice: we can see things as the end of days and turn inward, or we can work towards a messianic era and reach out our hands to fix our broken world.  In today’s times of trouble, in our Holy Day season of turning towards the purest paths, may we all move away from talking about the apocalypse and instead dedicate ourselves even more deeply to the work of tikkun olam, of bringing hope and healing to all.

—

Rabbi Seth M. Limmer, serves Chicago Sinai Congregation.  He is also the immediate past Chair of the Justice and Peace Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and also Vice-Chair of the policy-setting body of the Union for Reform Judaism, its Commission on Social Action, and currently serves on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Moral Resistance and Spiritual Authority: Our Jewish Obligation to Social Justice from CCAR Press., now available for pre-order.

Categories
Israel News

In Solidarity with Our Israeli Colleagues Part 1: Against the Nation-State Law

We join in solidarity with our Israeli colleagues and with the whole Israeli Reform Movement in opposing the Nation State Law just passed last night. The following is a statement on the law from our Israeli colleagues Rabbi Gilad Kariv and Rabbi Noa Sattath.

Friends and Partners Shalom,

Last night the Knesset passed the final version of the “Nation State” Law.

As all of you are aware, over the past weeks  and especially the last few days we have organized and led the intense public and political “battle” to prevent this law from passing.  Many of you aided us in this effort and we want to express our deepest gratitude. We believe that our efforts put Reform and Progressive Jews in the forefront of the struggle for Israel’s democratic and Jewish values based on our Zionist and Democratic world view.

During this public struggle we stated clearly that the “Nation State” Law can actually help us in legal claims regarding recognition of the non- Orthodox  streams of Judaism from the very fact of the statement in the law that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. At the same time we nonetheless fiercely opposed the law because of the worsening of relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel,  and because the law does not mention Israel’s Declaration of Independence, or the principle of equality and democratic values of the state of Israel.

It is important to note that the version of the law that was ratified by the Knesset is very different from the original versions that were proposed. It does not include any statement in which the Jewish character of the state is more important than the democratic character (the democratic character of Israel is anchored in the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Freedom passed in the 90s). The law also does not include a statement giving an official status of Jewish law (halacha) as a source of inspiration,  nor does the law give itself a higher status than the other Basic Laws. Additionally instead of the original line that stated clearly that people could be prevented from joining community settlements on the basis of religion, ethnicity, or nationality, the law now only makes a general statement in support of Jewish settlement as a national value that the nation should promote.

All of these points reduce the negativity of the original versions, but it’s still important to state that we feel that this is a terrible and unnecessary law which erodes the necessary balances among the core values of the state of Israel.

In the coming days we will distribute a detailed summery regarding the law including the lessons we have learned in the process of the struggle against the law, and thoughts regarding the future. We are convinced that our Zionist, Progressive and Democratic Voice is needed now more than ever to be heard. We believe that even after the law is passed, we should express our disappointment and concern to Israeli ambassadors and representatives throughout the world. It’s very important that Jerusalem be made aware that the passing of the law leaves a heavy burden on Israeli society and world Jewry and that large numbers of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world are deeply worried about erosion of Israel’s core values.

We want to thank all those who helped and continue to participate in the effort, both our professionals and our volunteer leadership in Israel and around the world.

B’vracha,

Rabbi Gilad Kariv and Rabbi Noa Sattath

FAQ: Nation State Law
Rabbi Kariv’s Speech at a Rally Opposing the Law