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Israel News

The Mistaken Equivalency of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

National blue and white flag of Israel outdoors

Earlier this year I had occasion to speak at a synagogue in Johannesburg, South Africa. The subject was my motivation and experience as an American Jew who made aliya to Israel more than thirty years ago. The presentation included a description of my Jewish and Zionist education and concluded with an explanation that my primary motivation was a personal desire to be a participant in the making of modern Jewish history. What better place could I do so, I concluded, than by living with my family in the State of Israel.

Immediately following my presentation the hands went up. One after another of the participants in the audience challenged me with biting comments and striking allegations all of which I thought were both surprising and of course incongruous. How could I possibly call myself a Zionist when to do so is to embrace an ideology advocating apartheid? How can I identify with a regime which is oppressive and dismissive of the human rights of the Palestinians? Is not Judaism and Zionism incompatible? Are not Zionists acting just like the white nationalists did in apartheid South Africa?

The people asking the questions seemed sincere. It appeared to me that they were genuinely struggling with themselves both intellectually and spiritually. On the one hand they were trying to find an acceptable way to identify as Jews. On the other hand they could not reconcile their identification with a Jewish State that in their minds, no less than in official political circles, was perceived as the very incarnation of evil. No doubt, there are growing numbers of Jews in other diaspora countries who share the same dilemma which may not be the case with many non-Jewish critics of Israeli policy.

It is true that many non-Jews throughout the world are bitter critics of Israeli policy. As such, many exaggerate and generalize about Jews and what they believe to be normative Zionist ideology. Their conviction is that Zionism is a racist ideology and the plight of the Palestinian people is proof positive of this fact. Thus, it is a short distance between identifying Jews as a group with the Jewish state and ergo their presumed support for the oppressive policies of the state. In their minds this legitimizes their struggle in support of the long suffering Palestinians.

As Jews we may prefer drawing a distinction between our religious or ethnic identity and the specific political policy of any given government of Israel. Nonetheless, such efforts are judged to be ingenuous by our critics. This is hardly surprising considering the fact that Israeli policy today is defined by right wing revisionists who have perpetuated the occupation of the Palestinian people for the most part of nearly 50 years. For the greater part of this half century, they have successfully advanced their ultra-nationalist and irredentist vision of Zionism. Sadly too, the contours of this policy have increasingly resulted in a growing number of separatist realities.

In spite of the aforementioned, I do not accept the idea that being critical of, or opposed to, Israeli policy, automatically makes one an anti-Semite. I would suggest that taking such a position is incorrect as it feeds the illusory idea that what is being alleged about Jews and Zionism has credence. After all, there are Jews who are Zionists and Israeli, like myself, who are strongly opposed to the principles and policies of the current Israeli government. We are in fact, passionate critics. I explained these positions to my South African Jewish interlocutors. I spoke about how I became a Zionist in the tradition of the Labor Zionist Movement. Our ideological vision is rooted in the principles of social and economic justice, liberal democracy and the pursuit of a just peace. I am opposed to the occupation and consider the settlement program to be destructive of our vital interests and threatening to our security. And of course I acknowledge the fact that settling Jews in occupied territories is in contradiction of international law as defined by the Geneva Conventions. For me and a not inconsequential percentage of Israelis and Jews worldwide, progressive Zionism is as legitimate and normative as Revisionism is for others.

Perhaps if Israel’s Jewish and non-Jewish critics were better educated about the differing streams of Zionism, they would be less inclined to generalize based on the policies of Israel’s current government.

Perhaps too, they would begin to understand the differences by learning about the accusations made by our right wing critics here in Israel. Among other allegations they assert that we are self-hating anti-Zionists and anti-Semites! It is likely that they make these charges because we expose their activities and reject their views as submissive to the ideological fantasies of intolerant political and theological extremists.

There is a profound distinction to be made between anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and criticism of the policies of a particular Israeli government.

—

Rabbi Stanley Ringler is an Israeli Reform Rabbi and Social and Political Activist.

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News

Let The Optimism In You Die Hard

I‘m an optimist. I resist the “half-empty” glass. I look for the best in others. At times, I suffer the consequences, but seeing the good helps me to feel better and remain upbeat even in times of hardship and crisis. As a manager of people, I’ve found that it’s far more effective to encourage others’ sparks of creativity and goodness, intelligence and decency than to be overly critical and negative.

I’m well aware, of course, that everyone errs, uses bad judgment, succumbs to ego, appears foolish, behaves destructively, and gives license to their darker angels. But I stay hopeful anyway as a necessary hedge against despair.

The most effective means to counter one’s own demoralization and to help others do the same, especially as the election cycle has concluded and a new administration is about to begin, is to become more engaged in social justice advocacy work than we ever have been before, that we might help to prevent a deterioration in our democracy and our compassionate society.

There are so many just causes and just organizations as well as just officials at the local, state and federal levels who share our vision and democratic pluralist values with whom we can align.

Most especially, we Jews have no choice but to act as Jews and be ready to advocate on behalf of the vulnerable and the shrinking middle class, and to stand united against efforts to eviscerate the social safety net.

We have to push hard on behalf of the welfare of the 42 million food insecure Americans who have no idea when or from where their next meal will come.

We have to support women’s rights to equal pay for equal work, and their right to choose, as well as the equal marriage rights of the LGBTQ community.

We have to stand up for the environment, for science, for technological advance, for higher education for everyone regardless of their ability to pay, for critical thinking, and for fact-based truth.

We have to protect immigrants, peoples of color, and strangers, and to challenge those who claim that any human being is “illegal.”

The pendulum swings both ways and we can’t forget the ancient words of the Biblical prophet that called for justice, compassion and humility before God.

We have to remember Dr. King’s words that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

That is the message of hope. The optimist in me dies hard. I hope that it dies hard in you too!

—

Rabbi John L. Rosove serves Temple Israel of Hollywood of Los Angeles, CA.

 

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News

Why I Wear a Yarmulke

Photo Credit: Rick Karp

While I was riding the subway home from school yesterday, six very large white men stepped onto the subway together. There was no act of violence, no hate speech, no physical sign of them having any leanings towards white supremacy, but I was immediately scared and watchful. I wondered if they had seen my yarmulke.

As the men stood there chatting it was a moment of revelation for me. I could have quickly and quietly taken it off and secreted it into a pocket, and for all intents and purposes they would have seen me as a smaller, less masculine version of them. I chose to continue wearing it. Why, I wondered, in the face of even just a psychologically invented fear, did I continue wearing it?

In the moment, my brain fired off a series of answers. I like that it reminds me, and others, of who I am. I like that it represents my connection to the Jewish people. I like that if I do something good, or kind, people will associate it with Jews at large. I like that the folk etymology (which is almost certainly an ex-post-facto invention) is a Hebrew-Aramaic mashup meaning something to the effect of “Fearer of the King.” And fear I do feel.

Very recently, for the first time, fear for my safety almost drove me to remove the little crocheted piece of cloth from my head. Blocks from HUC-JIR in New York, at my partner’s workplace, someone had defaced the New School’s student dorms by spraying swastikas on the doors of Jewish women and women of color. The same day, a friend of mine from college was walking through Washington Square Park, also just blocks from the campus of HUC-JIR in New York, and was accosted by a man who stopped and stood directly in front of her, stared at her, laughed in her face then said, “You’re funny looking, Jew. Ugly Jewface.”

Hate crimes have been on the rise for the past year, and sharply in the past week. It’s undeniable, even though some may try to argue that they aren’t any more prevalent, but are just being reported by the media more often. I haven’t seen any reports of physical violence against Jews during this spate, but there certainly have been on other people targeted by the newly emboldened white supremacist masculinists (or, as others refer to them, the alt-right).

Americans are living in a fear right now that has been a lifelong reality for many due to institutionalized homophobia, misogyny and white supremacy. It is time that we as Jews do some heshbon haemunah. Do we really believe in tikkun olam as a theological principle? Is yirat ha’shamayim (or, yirat hamelech) something we give lip-service to, or an idea we take seriously? To put our theological money where our mouth is in relation to these concepts is to look at the new reality we are facing in America with a gaze set well beyond parochial interest. It is to reclaim who we are in this place and in this time. If we are the Nation of Israel, and our God is the All-Powerful force which created Heaven and Earth, and all of humanity, we must accept that our partnership in this project is to fix that which has been broken in the universe, not just in our own enclaves. In other words, as the prophet Micah said, we must “preserve justice and do righteousness.” To do this is to put the fear of God above other fears, which is to see the forest for the trees, and to realize that our action (or inaction) today has an impact well beyond the life and time we are currently inhabiting.

So I will leave my yarmulke on, and it will serve the purpose its folk-etymology intends. I will wear it, and use the fear I feel to remind me that there is much work to be done to fix that which has been broken. Even though we may not see the task completed, and the process will be hard and scary, it is incumbent upon all of us to never stop working.

—

Andy Kahn is a fourth year rabbinic student at HUC-JIR. He also served the CCAR as an intern during the last two academic years.

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News

Reflections on 50 Years in the Rabbinate

Because my classmates and are celebrating our 50th year in the rabbinate, it’s not at all surprising that I find myself in a reflective mood.

After all, a half of a century seems to be a very long time in most of our lives; and, thinking about so much which has happened to us – individually and collectively – since Dr. Nelson Glueck declared that we were ready to serve as rabbis during our unforgettable Ordination Service at Cincinnati’s Plum Street Temple in 1967, it is only natural that most of us are experiencing a torrent of memories washing over us right now.

Ever since Dale Panoff advised all of us that the CCAR plans to honor us during its annual gathering this coming March in Atlanta, over and over again two related questions have surfaced from the depths of my very being:

“Have I used the rabbinate as a vocational vehicle to propel me from one opportunity to another in my determined desire to serve God, our unique Jewish people, and so many of God’s other wondrous peoples?”

“Or, did the rabbinate use me to play a number of extraordinary roles in a quest to enhance the totality of my own life while I have been engaged in trying to lift up adults and children whom I’ve encountered in those congregations I’ve led and in communities which have been allowed me to shine a light into some very dark places throughout this journey that has thus far spanned 50 years?

I may have thought that I was in total control of my career/vocation; however, when I carefully consider its constant twists and turns I am left with the realization that nothing has happened either solely under my direction or merely by happenstance.

Instead, the road which I’ve traveled was really not only of my own choosing but it has been influenced by a confluence of sacred and secular forces, as well as by a variety of challenging situations that I’ve encountered along the way.

During this half-century – particularly when my heart and mind have been open to all kinds of possibilities – the rabbinate has permitted me to be emotionally, intellectually and spiritually grow and to clearly see the world as it really is.

It has been then when I have enthusiastically responded to the needs of a vast array of persons and groups, and when I have been constantly emboldened by the ultimate realization that I have been doing work assigned to me by God.

Have there been times of confusion, of disappointment, of exhaustion? Of course!

But, most often they have occurred at those times when I have failed to energize my better self or when I have tried to satisfy some superficial ego need instead of being totally in touch with my reality and remembering that what I must do is to actualize some potential – mine and/or other folks.

Of uppermost importance have been those young people and adults who have turned to me for guidance, support, and a clear vision of what they and I are able to achieve when we keep our cooperative efforts viable and exclusively focused on an assortment of worthy end goals.

At the heart of what I began to become 50 years ago was essentially the beginning of an evolving affirmation; it has been rooted in the belief that all of us, dear colleagues, have been ennobled by the teachings and demands of Judaism’s biblical and contemporary prophets – those consistent advocates of human rights and social justice, who – according to Abraham Joshua Heschel – taught those who would listen to them that “the self is not the hub but the spoke of a revolving wheel.”

I have witnessed how that wheel is constantly propelling all of us towards a better tomorrow. And, I have been reminded over and over again that ours is the responsibility to make sure that – without exception – it is used to convey each and all of God’s progeny to a place where an abundance of blessings awaits us whenever we give evidence that we deserve them.

So, reflecting on everything that has occurred during this span of a half-century – even when I never for a moment ignore those losses which I have been forced to sustain – if you were to ask me: “Allen, how are you?” without hesitation, my instantaneous response is: “I am blessed!”

—

Rabbi Allen I. Freehling serves as Rabbi Emeritus at University Synagogue in Los Angeles, California and is celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate.

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News

Post-Election Reflection

I’ve had a few weeks to reflect since our post-election call; I imagine you all have.  I have experienced a heightened awareness of something I feel at a lower level the rest of the time, and that is the knowledge that there are times I miss being on the bimah and there are times I don’t.  This is one of those times where I do – and I don’t.   I miss the sense of exciting opportunity but not the dread of momentous responsibility that rests heavily on rabbinic shoulders at a time like this.  This post-election moment continues to be a wonderful-terrible time to be a rabbi.  It’s wonderful because people need us; ditto for terrible.

Let’s start with wonderful.  Most rabbis are kol bos.  Because we are called upon to do many different things and may even do many different things well, we often feel an amorphous sense of purpose.  We look at other colleagues who seem to have found a particular visionary path – those we think of as a social action rabbi, a scholarly rabbi, a pastoral rabbi, or an entrepreneurial rabbi – and we find ourselves wishing for a similarly defined objective.  This kind of thinking  (largely a fantasy) often devolves into an excuse for the self-punishing question, “How come they have it figured out and I don’t?”

Well, this may just be the moment you’ve been wishing for (and yes, I know what they say about getting what you wish for).  If you have ever longed for a clear definable purpose, you have it now.  You don’t have to consider yourself a “specialist rabbi” to find a renewed sense of mission in the days ahead.

That doesn’t mean that it is clear exactly how you should carry out that mission.  That specific decision will depend upon who you are and what the needs and desires of your constituency might be. This is not an emergency although our feelings may be urgent.  An emergency requires instantaneous response; we have time to consider our next step. It also makes no sense to think that every rabbi will or should take the same path. But it does make sense to start thinking and talking about your own possible courses of action.

What principles should you keep in mind in figuring out where you want to focus your own energies?

First, we all know the usual difficulties of finding committed volunteers. We often grumble as we find ourselves doing what we had hoped our laypeople would do. What’s different now is that our laypeople have been roused to action by this election.  We have a chance to partner with them in choosing a course of action.  This means that we need not take on the burden of changing the world alone; it may start with us but it can’t end there.  Adding more to our plates is not a long-term solution; finding a genuine sharing is the goal.

Second, we have an opportunity to widen the Jewish tent. If we can publicize our plans to make a difference in the world, we might draw people to our communities who previously have seen no purpose to organized religious communities. We can show them the power of community in a new and real way.

Third, we have constituents who disagree with us. That isn’t a problem if they are making themselves heard in ways that are appropriate. Working with people who are cooperative is something we do well. It’s when we are working with the uncooperative that we run into trouble.  Some people really do desire to talk; others simply seem to be discharging aggression with us as the target.  It’s important to find a way to relate to these more aggressive people without letting ourselves be abused on the one hand or responding aggressively on the other.  The best response for us is to avoid “fight or flight” and instead hold our ground and choose to engage.  We can say things like: What should happen if you and I disagree? Why should that be what happens? Could something else happen? Should we agree on everything? How could that be possible?

Fourth, whatever your feelings might be, you can’t let them get in the way of the task at hand.  Yes, you need to be in the moment and have your feelings.  But it’s also important to keep the future in mind at the same time. As the rabbis did centuries ago, we have a religious mandate to dwell in both places, balancing today’s concerns with planning for those of tomorrow.

And finally, find a place where you can speak your truth in an unfettered way (RavBlog is a good place to start).  One of the challenges of being a rabbi involves knowing when to speak and when to stay silent, how to say things and to whom.  No one can operate with that level of self-restraint every moment of every day. Find those safe places where you can feel relieved of that responsibility even just for the moment.

Many of us felt such overwhelming grief in the aftermath of the election that we used the analogy of death and shivah.  Our intention was never to trivialize grief, although some mourners heard it that way.  Having had a few weeks to sit with this, I prefer now to use the language of loss.  We grieve losses the way we grieve death to some degree.  Yet while this election may carry some sense of finality, it is not final like death. It is hard to escape the fear of more losses to come. We need to plan for them.

Buy that parcel of land in Anatot. Lead with hope for the future.

—

Rabbi Lewis is a certified psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, NJ, and New York City. She is a member of the Society of Modern Psychoanalysts  and the National Association for the  Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

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Books shabbat

“The Principle of the Ongoing Human Project”: How I Keep Shabbat

“How does one determine the proper way to keep Shabbat?” I get that question regularly from Jews who do not follow halachah traditionally, but who do not consider it irrelevant, and want a means of deciding such things as whether to write or ride or use electricity then.

Because the commandment to keep Shabbat appears in the Torah adjacent to the discussion of building the desert sanctuary (the Mishkan), the Rabbis interpret Shabbat work to include any item connected with that sanctuary’s sacrificial cult—thirty-nine activities in all, including sowing and plowing, kneading and baking, spinning and tearing, slaughtering and writing, kindling or dousing a fire, and so on (Mishnah Shabbat 7:2).

Liberal-minded Jews often wonder about these things. Kindling fire was difficult work back then, they say, but flicking an electric switch is hardly backbreaking labor. Their bafflement is understandable, but they miss the biblical point. While they may well decide that turning on lights is permissible for them on Shabbat, that decision can hardly be based on the amount of actual toil involved. The Rabbis’ concept of work goes much deeper than that.

The thirty-nine forms of sanctuary work fall into four categories: baking bread (for the priests), preparing fabric (for the Tabernacle’s curtains), preparing a scroll (for writing), and building (the Mishkan itself). These four, however, are part of a larger category: they are all part of the human project of building and preserving culture.asset_image

This insight arrives by way of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who noted that every human society cooks food, mandates clothing, builds and decorates homes, and transmits learning from generation to generation. This insistence on converting raw nature into cuisine, style, art, and a historical record is what makes us fully human.

The rabbinic forms of work, then, are no mere laundry list of random items. They are all exemplifications of the grand human project of transforming nature into culture.

“Work” is not just going to a job or doing the housework, therefore. It is the ongoing human effort to leave our mark upon the world—a human project that inevitably engages us, because it is the means of staking out our worth and, in the end, leaving behind what we will be remembered for. It’s what gets us up in the morning.

But at the same time, it’s what we lose sleep over. So Shabbat is the day that provides a break from the ongoing task of advancing the human project, as if God says, “I hold you responsible for perfecting My world—but not today.”

Here, then, is how I, a liberal Jew, make Shabbat decisions. I consult halachah with seriousness; I then measure my life by its principles, but not by all its specific regulations. One such principle is to take time off from the human project. So anything connected with that project’s work and worry gets put on hold.

On Shabbat, I do not (for example) write my books, articles, and columns, but I do e-mail personal notes to friends and family. My Shabbat reading can be about anything—but not connected to my research. I study Torah, but not any section on which I am writing an article. I do no errands, but I drive to synagogue and leisure-time activities that enhance life’s fullness.

On Shabbat, I cherish the gift of family and friends; I fill my soul with music and art, love and laughter, nature and nurture, solitude and community. My responsibility for the human project will return soon enough, when Shabbat is over.

I have the highest regard for Jews who follow the traditional halachic guide to keeping Shabbat. But stipulating just that single path to proper Shabbat observance puts Shabbat beyond the reach of those who find its halachic details unpersuasive but who nonetheless want to honor Shabbat in a reasonable and satisfying way. This underlying “Principle of the Ongoing Human Project” can be a compelling guide to making Shabbat matter in our lives.

 —

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, is professor of liturgy, worship, and ritual at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

Excerpted from Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition, edited by Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro and published in 2016 by CCAR Press.

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Books High Holy Days Holiday Mishkan haNefesh

Wandering in the Desert with Mishkan HaNefesh

Editor’s Note: Most of the blogs on RavBlog are written by CCAR members. Occasionally, we share a blog by a special guest with a unique message. We are pleased to share this blog by poet Jessica Greenbaum.

I’ve resisted the impulse to tour our country’s beautiful deserts because of my clashing impulse to take a swim most days of my life. These two things just don’t go together. However, caught in that life-cycle moment of watching my youngest daughter gleefully wave goodbye from the window of her freshman dorm, I vowed to set out on new territory myself. Unlike Dante’s mid-life figure of The Inferno who finds himself in a dark wood, I found my mid-life self transported to the squint-inducing sunlight of Mesa, Arizona, which highlighted the orange and red striped canyons, and blue skies of the Tonto National Forest. The “forest” part was clearly tagged on to prize its rarest asset. Like the “green” of icy Greenland. I came to the desert ranch with a tour company that specializes in open water swimming vacations. Yes, they exist! They had mapped out a week’s course through three of the dammed lakes of the Salt River, also within the national forest. So, no problem swimming, but another problem loomed. Yom Kippur fell in the middle of the only week they offered. I took 40 seconds to think. Then, like any good tourist, I paid my money and packed my machzor.

As it works out, and for reasons fascinating only to myself, I was already waist deep in the most solitary experience of the holidays that I can remember. Unexpectedly, Rosh Hashana had been without my husband and girls: just me, Mishkan Hanefesh, and my laptop open on my quilt, for synagogue livestreaming. Whatever the congregation was doing virtually on the screen, I tried to follow on analogous pages. Just when I was getting teary about the yarzheit of my grandmother, I turned the page and—there it was! Stephen Ackerman’s awesome poem, “Effortless Affection,” which begins: “All last requests are granted / and this is mine: grasp my affection / in your hand and hold it there . . .”  Beshert. I had my prayer book, so I had my shul.

Well that had been okay for a Rosh Hashana Plan B in Brooklyn. But determined to hear Kol Nidre in person, I arranged that during my trip I would attend an Arizonan congregation. I brought Mishkan Hanefesh with me in case they were using some old wooden machzor—which they were. I turned to my own when my mind wandered. As uninspiring as the service was, the tiny congregation was hamishe, I was with other Jews, and I needed that. Packing my own machzor made me feel faintly ancient. All those stories of the Jew traveling from one town to another and ducking in somewhere for services . . . all I needed was a donkey.

But what to do on Yom Kippur day? I could return to the shul, but enjoying my first real vacation for nine years, shouldn’t I spend every day of it swimming with the tour? Two words stopped me: Sandy Koufax. If the great pitcher could sit out the 1965 World Series and inspire John Goodman’s line in the movie The Big Lebowski “Three thousand years of beautiful tradition: from Moses to Sandy Koufax,” well, couldn’t I skip a day? The surrounding canyon walls and idiosyncratic menorahs of saguaro cacti designed the most tasteful tabernacle from here to Woodstock. I decided to hang out with Mishkan Hanefesh. I told my fellow swim lunatics to plow on without me. I livestreamed my favorite NYC synagogue and practiced a mix of e-Judaism and reading, wandering around the immediate canyon with my MacBook open and machzor in hand, singing along. The new ner tamid looks like an apple with a bite out of it. Somehow this goes together.

Well, I never spent so long in services. Here’s what I liked about it. At that remove, I happily couldn’t miss the fantasy congregation—of close friends and family—I had never actually had. I was better able to concentrate on the demand Yom Kippur makes on the conscience. I wrote down those aspects of my personality I needed to confront. ( . . . page 2. . . .) The livestream lets viewers chat in the screen’s margin, a cyber gathering of the disenfranchised from all over the world. So you could still tell latecomers what figurative page we were on! If the NYC congregation was mumbling or otherwise leaving me behind, I could page through my machzor and find what I needed, learn what was there for me. I wasn’t bothering anyone when I fidgeted. I wasn’t thinking what I had to bring to break the fast, or if the brisket would be done. I had my prayer book so I had my shul. When the rabbi took a break for two hours, I took a little dip in the ranch pool. I know you’re not supposed to. But a little swim let me return to the pages and the services and take in what I could even if I wasn’t fasting when I was wandering. The desert and canyons surrounded. I was getting someplace, I could feel it.

—

Jessica Greenbaum is poet living in Brooklyn, and is the author two volumes of poetry, Inventing Difficulty (Silverfish Review Press, 1998), winner of the Gerald Cable Prize, and The Two Yvonnes (2012), which was chosen by Paul Muldoon for Princeton’s Series of Contemporary Poets. She is the poetry editor for upstreet,  received a 2015 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America in 2016. Some of her poems are featured in CCAR publications, including The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, and Mishkan HaNefesh.

 

Categories
News

Some Movies Deserve to Be “Spoiled”

“Allied” opens in Casablanca, home to the most classic of World War II movies. Its protagonists, Marianne (Marion Cotillard) and Max (Brad Pitt) are spies, she on behalf of the French Resistance and he as a Canadian officer in the Royal Air Force. Marianne teaches Max how to be a good spy, which requires him to pretend to be her loving husband, and to do so convincingly. Their mission to assassinate the Nazi Ambassador in Morocco is successful. Predictably, they fall in love and get married “for real.”

The movie is engrossing and entertaining. The audience roots for Marianne and Max — for their love affair as much as for the British, Canadian, and French Resistance fighters who are the movie’s real heroes.

Ultimately, though, Max is called to a meeting with the Royal Air Force command under the guise of a promotion. Instead, Max is told that Marianne is a double agent. The real Marianne has died fighting before the movie begins. Cotillard’s character has assumed her identity. That Ambassador in Casablanca? A dissident whom Hitler wanted dead.

Max goes on a quest to prove that his wife is no traitor. We continue to pull for them and for their family, now including an infant daughter born during a London air raid.

Alas, “Marianne” has been spying — yes, on Max — all along. And yet, the filmmakers persist.

First, Cotillard’s never-named character, the fake “Marianne,” claims that she had no choice; the Nazis threatened their infant daughter’s life if she wouldn’t cooperate. But that character had been a Nazi before ever meeting Max. Worse, the film treats the claim of “no choice” uncritically. Couldn’t Marianne have told Max, the two going to their Allied supervisors together, perhaps ultimately being secreted away to Canada with their young daughter?

After her suicide is reported as Max’s having carried out his duty to execute his treacherous “wife,” we are treated to a sepia-toned ending. Sobs reverberate in the theater. We hear Cotillard’s voice behind images of that infant daughter growing up back in Canada with her single father, a wedding photograph of “Marianne” and Max prominently on display. Cotillard’s character reads a letter she has written to her daughter the night before her suicide, proclaiming her undying love.

No. Nazis are Nazis. In England. In 1944. No tears should be shed at her death, and no real Max would prominently display his deceptive wife’s photograph as a role model for the daughter he raises in postwar Canada.

Even the film’s apparently redeeming feature betrays the past. Max’s sister lives openly with her female partner, and they are treated much as a lesbian couple would be in 2016, dishonoring the sacrifices required of and the indignities suffered by same-sex couples of the era the movie purports to portray.

“Allied” deserves none of the critical accolades it has received, and its makers do not deserve its suspense to be maintained to draw unsuspecting viewers like me into the cinema. “Allied” is a beautiful love story and captivating film only if being a Nazi is less incriminating than being in love is endearing.

—

Rabbi Barry Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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On the Eve of Thanksgiving, Further Post-Election Reflections

On this eve of Thanksgiving, I am reflecting deeply and with profound movement of spirit and heart upon two weeks of listening, processing and holding the feelings raised by the election. In my role with the CCAR, it was a tremendous privilege to help organize the call we offered to our members and to share in the leadership of that call with our insightful, skilled and heart-open colleague, Ellen Lewis. All that Ellen taught us that day has remained present to me in the passage of these weeks and has helped immensely. To summarize a couple of key points, Ellen reminded us to be attentive to the truth of our own feelings and to remember that those feelings can inform how we act but need not control our actions. She invited us to self-care and compassion, and to hold close the knowledge that, in times of heighted feelings (particularly anger, fear and anxiety), we are all prone – and this includes those we serve – to acting out and displacement. I know those teachings will have proven helpful to those who were on the call (or who availed themselves of the recording as found at on the CCAR member’s site) as they have to me.

Upon reflection, I have a couple of additional thoughts to offer, particularly to those who have been in pain over the results. First, I have felt and noticed heard people speak of feelings that resemble those of mourning. And I would caution us against buying too fully into that metaphor. As many of us know from pastoral work, when someone is gravely – even life-threateningly ill – it is not uncommon for people to slip into anticipatory grief. It is almost as though the psyche is saying, “If I just experience the anger or the sadness now, maybe I won’t fall into despair when the inevitable death happens.” And it is a dangerous place to go. Chevre, the patient(s), our own souls and the soul of our country are gravely wounded, but the wounds have not yet proven fatal nor even been pronounced mortal. As was the case after 9/11, certain ideas we had about how things were may well have died two weeks ago, or at least been seriously altered. But we are here, as is the nation. We need to avoid falling into the anticipatory grief which will prevent us from doing whatever is to be our tikkun in responding to the wounds.

And one piece of the tikkun – in the framework of Rebbe Nachman’s teaching, especially on this eve of Thanksgiving, we can be looking for the od m’at (see Psalm 37) – the little place where evil/despair/rage do not hold sway, and from that little place “azamra l’Elohai b’odi” (Psalm 146) sing our way into inviting abundance back into the world – abundance of love, of hope and of commitment to justice. On this Thanksgiving, may the little place sing to each of us and help us inch our way toward healing and sacred purpose. And then, back to the work.

Rabbi Rex Perlmeter is CCAR Special Advisor for Member Care and Wellness

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Books shabbat

Creating Holy Moments

A way to deepen the Shabbat experience involves less talking and more silence—something focused more internally. It is a practice called mindfulness. The following essay, exerpted from Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition, explores how mindfulness can be part of your Shabbat practice.

 

Be Like God

The opening narrative in the Book of Genesis introduces us to a hard-working and busy God, creating the entire world, according to the Torah, in just six days. The Book of Exodus introduces us to another aspect of God’s identity. Here the Torah reminds us, “On the seventh day [God] ceased from work and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:17). The Hebrew words of this verse, bayom hashvi-i shavat vayinafash, are part of the V’shamru prayer sung on Friday night; they are also used to introduce the Kiddush on Shabbat morning.asset_image

The words tell us about God and speak to the human condition as well. They suggest that on the seventh day, we can be like God. We can become still; we can settle in, breathe deeply, and be refreshed. The rituals for the Shabbat table blessings are built around the Torah’s suggestion that God’s actions on the seventh day of creation are a model for all of us—men and women, teenagers, and even children. Work six days with a full heart at whatever you do and then stop. Stop and do something godlike, shavat vayinafash, sit still and breathe, become refreshed, and then return to the sacred work that fills our days, expressing creativity, working for freedom, repairing a broken world.

 

The Invitation

Shabbat is an invitation to slow down, to become more mindful of your self and your place in creation. The table blessings and rituals are tools to help make the transition from busy to not. It can be challenging to accept this sacred invitation, which is why it helps to keep the following in mind:

  • Slowing down is important.
  • Silence is good.
  • Posture makes a difference.
  • Any attempt at prayer is enough.
  • Even smiling helps!

Accepting the invitation to Shabbat and preparing to celebrate at the table can help us change pace and enable us to pay attention to how we move our bodies, use our breath, and quiet our minds. It’s a tiny taste of how we could live our lives, more attuned to the natural world, with greater connections to other people and greater awareness of God’s example.

 

Your Preparation

Even the physical act of setting out the candlesticks, the Kiddush cup, and the challah can help you begin to move into Shabbat with intention. The mindfulness meditations, which are offered along with the Home Service, can lead you further. You might try using one each week; perhaps do the same one for a few weeks in a row, or rotate them at other times. Some Fridays the process will feel right. You’ll know it has “worked.” Other times you may have less success. Remember that it is a practice, so we keep practicing, being grateful when we succeed and forgiving ourselves when we don’t.

 

Creating the Moment—Even Before Saying the Blessings

Experiment with the following steps when your friends and family arrive at the table ready to welcome Shabbat.

Stand with your feet planted about shoulders’ width apart. (This can also be done by those who

choose to remain seated.) This is a sturdy and deliberate stance.

Push your shoulders down and lengthen your spine to actually feel taller.
Close your eyes in order to focus better on your breath. If that is uncomfortable, just lower your

gaze to give everyone at the table some privacy.

Unclench your jaw, and loosen the muscles around your mouth.

Take one or two or even three long, slow, deep cleansing breaths in and out—inhaling so

deeply that you can actually feel your heart lift and ribs rise in your chest. It’s good to hear the sound of the breath, making its way from the world into the body and out again.

Open your eyes or raise your gaze.

Smile.

Turn to the Home Service or one of the readings or meditations in Gates of Shabbat.

Read aloud—slowly, very slowly—paying attention to the pause of each comma, the rest after

each period, the open space between each paragraph.

When you are done reading, pause again—counting to five in your head. There is no rush.

Take another deep breath in and out.
Smile again.
Notice how Shabbat has arrived.

Shavat vayinafash. Now you are into the moment. Hold an image or a word in your mind and then . . . then it is time, depending on which meditation you are using, to strike the match, raise the Kiddush cup, or remove the cover from the challah and begin to bless.

—

Mark Dov Shapiro is Rabbi Emeritus of Sinai Temple in Springfield, MA. He is the editor of Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition, published in 2016 by CCAR Press.

Excerpted from Gates of Shabbat, Revised Edition, edited by Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro and published in 2016 by CCAR Press.