What Jews Look Like (Or: did they ever diet in the shtetl?)

This week we read Parashat Korach, the portion of the book of Numbers in which a Levite named Korach, along with his family and friends, speaks out against Moshe's authority, arguing that the people's truth needs to have a role as well. Moshe sets up a test, or maybe an ambush, and Korach receives a divine slapdown of almost unimaginable proportions. Not only are his ideas quashed, but he and his people are swallowed up by the earth. The firepans they had used in the test are purified in fire and become part of the altar -- as a warning, according to the harsh text.

It's an interesting portion because as modern Jews, as voices for social justice, as questioners of authority and would-be truthtellers, our sympathies tend to lie with Korach. For me, this week has become an annual celebration of the rebel in us, and of our willingness to suffer the slapdown, the backlash, the firestorm that sometimes follows in the wake of representing unpopular truths.

And so I was particularly interested and excited this week to read the essay "Sized Up" by my friend Anna Mollow. In it, Anna takes to task our conventional wisdom about fatness and the health risks popularly associated with it. She asks us to look at the science, which does not support our suppositions and, once we're done with that, to see the ways in which it has become popular and unremarkable to scapegoat fat people in our society. Why, she wonders, is it important to harangue fat people for being fat, when studies actually suggest that fat people live longer than skinny people.

Speaking out, Korach-like, against conventional wisdom -- against ideas that we are certain are truth but can't quite put our fingers on how we know that -- she brought on a firestorm. If you're wondering where firestorms occur in this day and age, just look at the "comments" section of any online article. Some commenters expressed gratitude and relief for their truth being spoken. And others condemned, sometimes in cruel and personal terms, the very suggestion that our ideas about fat might be wrong. After all, what believer in healthy living wants to be told that they might actually be guilty of an ugly sort of prejudice that can no longer quite so easily be packaged as scientific or even painted as well-meaning?

I was among those who thought, "This can't be true. Fat people live longer?" So I went to some of Anna's sources, including The Diet Myth by Paul Campos and New York Times reporter Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss---and the Myths and Realities of Dieting. These books are exposés, gathering up the science that supposedly justifies our views of fat. But what the studies actually say is not at all what we've been told, and it's eye opening. Here are some of the surprising findings that you might need to read a couple times to absorb:

• People categorized as "overweight" under current body-mass index (BMI) standards typically have a decreased risk of premature mortality. That is, fat people live longer. Mind if I say that again? Fat people live longer. 
• Healthy diet and physical activity promote longevity -- in fat and thin people equally, without regard to whether it produces weight loss. 
• Fat people have no greater risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. than thin people.
• People at the far extremes of the bell curve -- both fat and thin -- suffer complications. 
• Making a long-term, significant change in one's body weight is nearly impossible.
• The greatest health risk fat people seem to face -- and it's a big one -- is dieting. Shedding 20 pounds and gaining them back (which is nearly always the case in the long run) radically increases the risk congestive heart failure, vascular disease and other problems we've typically associated with being fat per sé. In other words, it's pushing fat people, including ourselves, to diet that puts one at risk for all those nasty conditions.

In her essay, Anna sketches this problem as a queer issue, noting how the almost unthinking scapegoating of fat people looks like, and serves a similar social function as, the oppression of queers in this country (at least until relatively recently). Where queers were medicalized and psychologized baselessly; where queer jokes and disparaging comments used to be safe in any social setting, it is now fat people who are medicalized, and it is the fat joke that no one will object to.

And I, because it's what I do, would like to make this a Jewish issue as well, as many others, such as my friend Jane Herman, have often done. Because we Jews, as a tribe, come from shtetl stock; our bodies do, in fact, deviate from the American ideal. Thin is not our dominant shape. And our shape should be our core reference point, not the shape of someone on a Weight Watchers commercial.

So I'd like you to meet some poeple.

These are my great-grandmothers -- the two on the sides, seen here flanking my grandmother,  all celebrating Mother's Day in the early 1950s on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. Rebecca is on the left and Rose on the right. Grandma Sade is in the middle, but it is Rebecca and Rose I want to talk about. Both diminutive in height, both formidable women, both immigrants, both zaftik.¹

Neither of my great grandmothers was ever told to diet; neither of them ever did. Neither of them was told that fat was bad or that to be Americans they had to be skinny and blonde. Neither was informed of the supposed health risks of obesity, although both would certainly qualify as "obese" under the current BMI standards (as do, by the way, George Clooney and Tom Cruise). As busy balabostehs, heroic homemakers with many newly American children, neither had time to notice that fat people were supposed to be lazy and sedentary. Probably neither ever ate a McDonalds hamburger, although they ate well and Jewish. Both lived well into their 90s.

This is, takeh, how Jewish women look. At least in my book.

The point is that our ideas about fat are social, not medical. There is a social hatred of fat people in this country today, and in the last generation or so we have justified it with false science. The real science is out there, but the media and the public haven't caught on, and the diet industry doesn't want us to.

What is normal weight? What makes a weight ideal? Looking at the data, heavier than our current norm is in fact better for you. It's as if someone took the actual ideal window, compressed it and gave it a hard shove leftward on the bell curve.

Remember your grandmothers and your aunties; your Ashkenazic, immigrant, pre-diet craze foremothers. That is what women look like.

Once the science is yanked out from under the supposition that fat is bad, what is left to justify our constant criticism of fat people? An aesthetic judgment? Fat people are not attractive? A moral judgment? Fat people are lazy or lacking in self-control? No one would have called my great grandmothers any of those things. No one would have called them unattractive -- at least not until they arrived in America, where Jews and other undesirable ethnics increasingly could not be kept out of the professions and the social clubs, but at least they could be kept out of the aesthetic of physical desirability. A skinny Anglo-Saxon aesthetic, combined with a Puritan work ethic and, eventually, a multi-billion dollar diet industry, turned people who look like our grandmothers into people to be judged on the basis of their bodies.

Jews - take note. Our bodies haven't changed; just our values. Did anyone ever go on a diet in the shtetl? What would the idea of purposeful weight loss have sounded like to them?

Narishkayt.

Goyim naches.

Reject the war on obesity. Reject the vilification of fat people. Speak up against fat jokes. Oppose the shaming of fat kids, whether it is by school yard bullies or by public health campaigns. Fight for good health, healthy food, healthy activity and health care for everyone of all sizes. Stop trying to make fat people thin - and that includes yourself.

Before we finish, though, there is something in the Korach story that has always puzzled me. The firepans that belonged to Korach the rebel and his people are incorporated into the altar in the mishkan, the holy tent. You'd expect them instead to be cast out of the encampment. And though the text says it's a warning, some element of Korach's rebellion is clearly understood to be holy. And over time, Korach's plea for equality and fairness has become as holy and Jewish a value as anything Moses handed down at Mt. Sinai.

Plus, as my friend Atzilah Solot pointed out to me this week, another element of Korach is this: that even when our ideas are swallowed up by the earth, they become like seeds that will most certainly bloom later.

So let us open ourselves up to new truths; let us question any orthodoxy of thought; let us stand up for equality and fairness even -- and especially -- when the culture tells us that harsh judgments leveled against a class of people are natural and justified. And even if our voices are drowned out right now, know that we will have planted the seeds whose blossoming is just a season away.

Many thanks to Anna Mollow, Jane Herman and Atzilah Solot for all the inspiration and the insights.

---

1 Anna warns in her essay against euphemizing "fat", but I perceive "zaftik" in Yiddish as both non-evasive and as having a warm, favorable valence, meaning literally "juicy." I've always perceived it to be a word that doesn't mince words, and which is said proudly, descriptively and lovingly. I could be wrong - I've never been called zaftik, I don't know how it feels. And being affectionate doesn't necessarily make a euphemism not a euphemism. Maybe it's true that I don't want to say fat, and that I'm still working up to it. But in any event, in the name of reclaiming our particularly Jewish acceptance of diverse body shapes, I'm willing to go out on this limb. ^↩

B'chukotai: The Worth of a Life

For Congregation Ner Shalom and B'nai Israel Jewish Center
May 3, 2013

I heard a very moving story on NPR last week about a college senior back east who had signed up on a bone marrow donation registry a couple years ago and then forgot about it. Last week he got a call that he was a perfect match for a young man with aggressive leukemia. The odds of a perfect match outside of his family were 1 in 4 million. The hook of the story was this: the college senior was an aspiring athlete heading into the America East Championships, the culmination of his college track career. If he underwent the surgery to draw 2 liters of bone marrow from his pelvis, he would be unable to lift anything above his head for several weeks. As fate would have it, the young man's events were discus toss and shotput.

His college athletic career would be over without ever winding up. Meanwhile, the anonymous marrow recipient would not be cured of his leukemia. But he would, hopefully, have another year, maybe more.

The news stories were quick to point out that the college athlete did not hesitate in deciding to undergo the procedure rather than become a track champion. I'd hope we would all do the same.  But the media spin of one person's life pitted against another's got me thinking about the old question of the value of a human life. What is a life worth? What is a year worth? Especially when it is someone else's year? A stranger's year.

This is not the first time I've had cause to dwell on the topic of the value of a life. Among my dark secrets is that I am a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. That institution is famous, among other things, for its School of Law and Economics. Under its principles, the world operates as a sort of marketplace, and value makes itself manifest through economic markers. What I mean is that lives - and everything else - have value that can be quantified in economic terms, and then that value has a sort of purchasing power. So, for instance, let's say there's a hazard aassociated with a particular industry and so many workers die from it in the course of a year. Let's say there's a possible solution to the hazard, but it is very expensive. If the families of the lost workers sue the industry, the industry will have to pay out the value of those workers' unlived lives. If the total cost of those payouts is higher than the cost of the expensive safety measure, the industry will put the fix into effect not because it's right, but because it's cheaper. They will need neither Congress nor conscience to require it. That is the theory. It is rather an ugly theory. In its crass conversion of a life into dollars and cents, it suggests that life's market value is more important than its inherent value. It presumes that money is the primary or sole motivator of human conduct. And maybe that's ugly because it is, sadly, so often true.

My discontent with what my alma mater unleashed on the world came rushing back to me this week as I found in Torah a section doing, seemingly, just such an exercise: assigning cash value to the lives of various types of people. I was preparing to read two aliyot of this week's Torah portion, B'chukotai. In these eight verses I am to chant (Leviticus 27:1-8), the priests are given instructions on how to assess the cash value (erech) of a vow or pledge (neder) that is made on the basis of someone's life.
Let me explain this.

As you know, in biblical times, obligatory Temple sacrifices were the cornerstone of our religious life. The ancient Israelites - our ancestors - would bring their cattle or goats or poultry or grain to the Temple at the prescribed times. Sacrifices would be made, and the priests would also get fed in the process. But if you've ever been in the religious institution business, as many of you currently are, you know that one must do more than feed the rabbi. The electricity needs to run, and the gas and water. Repairs have to be made. Plus insurance and bookkeeping and outreach. And all of that requires managerial staff. Just as this is the case in every synagogue, it was also the case in Beyt Hamikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. The infrastructure required contributions beyond the sacrifices.

So there was a custom of making generous pledges, specifically gauged to one's own life or the life of a loved one. I can't quite figure out what the etiquette of this might have been. "In honor of Aunt Sylvia's birthday, I pledge the value of her life to the Temple!"

Perhaps it was an evolution from an earlier practice of actually donating the person! Remember the story where Hannah weeps and pledges that if she has a child she will dedicate him to the service of the Temple, and that baby turns out to be Samuel. Perhaps that kind of thing was not uncommon; and maybe over time the Temple administration realized that they needed cash a lot more than they needed hundreds of homesick children.

So this bit of Torah allows those nedarim, those pledges, to be satisfied through money instead. And the amount of money is connected to whose life was pledged. If the person whose life is being appraised was a grown man, the amount of the gift would be 50 silver Temple-standard shekels. It would be only 20 shekels if he were under 20; 5 shekels if he were under 5. If he's elderly he rings up at 15 shekels, which is less than a teenager but more than a toddler. And, sadly but not surprisingly, women pull in between 50 and 67 cents on the shekel, with the gender gap smallest in old age. There are many unanswered questions raised with respect to these valuations, such that an entire tractate of Talmud - Arachin - is devoted to the topic.

Now don't get nervous. This practice officially ended with the destruction of the Temple, so no one is about to ask you to pledge the value of a life to support this community. Probably. No, the practice ended, and all we have to show for it is a story: the story of a now-defunct system that set the value of various and sundry lives. It is disappointing to read in this story how women's lives were valued less; how the elderly's lives were valued less; how young people's lives were valued less. Some commentators have defended this system by noting that it ignores the social circumstances of the life in question. In its valuation of a life, Torah doesn't care if the person is rich, poor, able-bodied, literate, Jew or stranger.

This is unlike our legal system, where those factors do come into play, if not directly then indirectly. For instance, the families of victims of the  9/11 attacks were given remuneration based primarily on the lost earning potential of the loved one who was killed. That is, based on their salary. Which meant that the lives of the highest-earning victims - largely white male professionals - were worth more money than the lives of the poorest - largely immigrants and people of color. Although to his credit, Kenneth Feinberg, the Jewish head of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund did skew the formula somewhat to shrink the disparity.

But Torah does not make these economic or educational or social distinctions, say the commentators. It only distinguishes the value of lives based on what it considered to be immutable characteristics - age and gender. So maybe that is better. But on the other hand, isn't that bad enough?

As I chanted the verses over and over, I was glad that they were mine to read, because I would be forced to tussle with them. The passage was irritating me, angering me; it had my household and our non-Jewish houseguests up in arms. "What? You still read that? It's outrageous! Whatever for?"

And I silently agreed in part. Not that I shouldn't be reading it, but that I should have some idea what I'm reading it for.

As it happens, my study partner and I read a teaching of the Ba'al Shem Tov this week, in which the Chasidic master says that when an enemy speaks ill of you, you should look deep inside to see if there might be a modicum of what it is you're accused of, no matter how innocent you may feel. I realized that for me, this Torah portion felt like an enemy. I didn't like it. I didn't like what it says about us. So following the Ba'al Shem Tov's advice, I wondered if the portion was saying something that might actually have a kernel of truth within me, within us.

Maybe it is this. That we, try as we might not to, much as we decry it as wrong, also valuate different kinds of people differently. Clearly our culture and our media do it all the time. The news story of the missing middle class white woman is worth a lot more television time than the many missing people of color. Guns seem to become a national issue only when the victims are mostly white kids in a group, and not when they are black and Latino kids picked off one by one.

Surely many of us are critical of that injustice. But still, do we not quietly, subtly, unconsciously make similar distinctions ourselves? How many of our judgments about people we know or meet or hear about are, despite our best intentions, colored by that person's race or gender or age or language or wealth or poverty or education or sexual orientation or family life or physical ability or size or attractiveness? How might our perceptions of the bone marrow story be different if we knew something more, maybe something surprising, about the recipient? What different values do we assign to other people's lives without even noticing that we're doing it?

And then, kal b'chomer, all the moreseo, using such harsh standards, what value do we assign to our own lives? In what ways do we feel inadequate because we are not something else that we've been tricked into valuing more?

Maybe the problem is the very idea of valuation. Of displacing our fullness; of translating who we are into something more trivial. As if we are goods at a University of Chicago swapmeet and we are sitting on a shelf wondering what price we will pull in.

Maybe the proper measure of our lives is - wait, maybe our lives don't need to be measured at all. Not against anyone or anything or any currency other than ourselves and our own potential. After all, remember what Rebbe Zushya of Hanipol said. "In the coming world they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zushya?'”

How do we let go of our harsh and hardly-conscious judgments? I don't know. I suspect if we easily could, we already would have. How do we bravely offer up to this world our deep and incalculable worth without worry as to its market value? I don't know that either. The small thing I do know is that Torah is here, warts and all, to remind us of these questions when we otherwise might become too complacent to ask them. That even when Torah looks like an enemy, it is my "frenemy," gently (or not so gently) nudging me to look inside and put my own affairs in order.

And I know that each of our lives, not despite who we are, but because of it, is priceless.

The Kedoshim Question: Aural Argument

 For Congregation Ner Shalom ~ April 19, 2013, Netzach sheb'Netzach

Heaven was abuzz this week. Abuzz in a way that on earth you might perceive as an unusually high incidence of static electricity in the air, or gooseflesh for no particular reason. In the high reaches Malakhim and Seraphim gathered at fountains and courtyards to wonder together; Cherubim enfolded themselves in their six wings in disbelief. Ofanim exchanged meaningful glances with the animal faces of the Chayot. There was a holy hubbub of curious talk and rarely felt trepidation. How could this even be taking place? How could Holy Beings oppose the Holy Writ?

It is admittedly a most unusual case. A celestial challenge of divine law. Not a law given to angels, who need no law. But a law given to humans. A band of angels suing on behalf of humankind. Trying to upend law given at Sinai. Asking God to eat God's words!

Outrageous.

This has never happened before. Not since the Revelation, not since Creation, not since the Singularity that preceded that. The Archangel Metatron presides over the Heavenly Tribunal, and, as is the way of judges most supreme, would not comment on a case still in controversy.

Inside, the courtroom was packed. A gavel fell and a crier called out: "Shema! Shema! Oyez! Oyez! Let all persons having business with the honorable Yeshivah shel Ma'alah be admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting." The advocates approached the bench.

One spoke.

"Your honors, Rabbi Hillel, on behalf of petitioners, the petitioners being a coalition of angels representing the interests of the Sefirah of Chesed and the steady circulation of love from God into the world and back." Rabbi Hillel had been in happy retirement since his death, spending slow days playing Scrabble with Rabbi Shammai, who always complained that Hillel was making up words; Hillel insisted that if he had a plausible definition, especially a humorous one, his words should count. But now Hillel had been persuaded out of retirement in order to argue this most unusual case. He stood at the bench and beamed, despite his slightly dishevelled appearance, compounded by matzah crumbs from the sandwich he'd snuck into the chamber in his pocket.

"And opposing?"

The fiery glow was almost unbearable. "Archangel Gabriel, Solicitor Celestial, Avatar of the Sefirah of Gevurah, Keeper of Limits and Boundaries, Upholder of the Rule of Law. Your honors."

"Thank you counselors. Rabbi Hillel, you may begin."

"Your honors, as you know, the present controversy centers around a piece of Torah that begins with the words kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh ani. "Be holy because I am holy." The specific provisions that follow are considered a Holiness Code. The parties have stipulated that these mitzvot are the actions and restrictions humankind was instructed to follow in an attempt to embody holiness."

A nearly imperceptible flutter came over the gallery as the angels present imagined humans, with their seawater bodies and short attention spans, and felt a mix of amusement and pity and perhaps resentment. For the blink of an eye, the angelic drone of holy holy holy faltered; just a fraction of a second but long enough for the National Geological Survey to record tremors in three distinct points in the Pacific Ocean.

Rabbi Hillel pressed onward. "We have no dispute with the first verses of the Holiness Code, your honors. In fact, we applaud the Divine Wisdom that instructed humans to welcome the immigrant, to feed the poor, to respect elders, to observe the Sabbath, to love your neighbor as yourself. We also hold no opinion regarding the puzzling but largely benign prohibitions on planting mixed seeds and wearing linen-wool blends." With this, Rabbi Hillel suddenly became aware of his wrinkled kapoteh and moved a hand as if to smooth it before realizing the effort would be futile. "We do not object to any of those laws, your honors. However, where we see a tremendous, if previously overlooked, injustice is-- "

"Rabbi," the Chief Justice interrupted, "let us first take up the jurisdictional issue. By what authority does humankind seek to annul a law given by God? Are the earthly courts insufficient to handle the resolution of this matter?"

"Your honors," replied Rabbi Hillel, "we humans are gifted by our Creator with some sechel, some smarts, that we bring to difficult questions. We do not claim your wisdom of course; after all, as the Psalm says, just below angels are we. Yet as we humbly ponder the law and the very real lives of flesh and blood -- no offense your honors -- to which they must apply, we try to do so in the name of heaven. As it says in Talmud, eylu v'eylu divrei Elohim chayim. All of our conflicting points of view as we debate are in fact the living words of God."

"Yes, Rabbi" interrupted Chief Justice Metatron, "you are doing heaven's work; it has been delegated to humankind to do. So why bother us? Why do you humans not just do it?"

"Yes, your honor. We could; we would; we do. But there is precedent for a more direct exchange between heaven and earth in certain legal matters. For instance when there is imminent danger to God's creation -- or even to God's reputation. In such cases, petitions have gone directly to heaven. For instance, Father Abraham bargaining for the lives of the people of Sodom."

"It did him no good," spat Gabriel.

"His intervention was permitted even if his goal was not achieved," replied the sage. "And at times, in our toughest of cases, heaven has, unbidden, sent a bat kol, a prophetic voice, to guide us."

"Which guidance you have always ignored," countered the archangel.

"In any event, I would like to remind the Court that I am not here representing humankind but rather an intervening angelic body. The Coalition of Heavenly Entities Supporting Equality in Desire. CHESED." Rabbi Hillel glanced at the balcony where his clients waved a rainbow - a real rainbow in this case. He looked back at the panel. "These are angels who, observing the human struggle over the law we will discuss, are deeply moved to bring about its nullification."

"Your honor," broke in the Archangel. "These CHESED people cannot decide to challenge the law. They are angels. They have no free will. They are limbs of the divine. They respond only to Divine Thought."

"And yet," Hillel replied, "here we are. They are certainly responding to some element of the Divine Will, as are you, Counselor. We are aware of many aspects of the Divine - Truth, Beauty, Majesty, Mercy. Maybe it is time we add one: Ambivalence."

There was a collective gasp in the courtroom and this time the low monotone of holy holy holy broke off entirely. On earth, souffles fell and many thousands of individual socks instantly vanished unobserved from electric dryers.

"Rabbi Hillel will please leave the nature of the Divine to us," scolded the Chief Justice. "In the meantime, please move on to the merits of your petition."

"Thank you, your honors. Yeshivah shel Ma'lah, Judges most High, we are here today to correct a wrong. We are here to overturn Verse 13 of Chapter 20 of the third book of Torah, which says, "Man shall not lie with man as with a woman; it is an abomination; they shall be put to death." But I wish to begin with another text altogether. Shir Hashirim. Song of Songs, our people's greatest love poetry. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine."

"Relevance!" barked Gabriel.

"His left hand is under my head; his right hand embraces me."

"Your Honor!"

"Justices, my successor in life and colleague in Paradise the great Rabbi Akiva ben Yosef, noted that Song of Songs is a holy book. Is this disputed?"

"No objection," said Gabriel cautiously.

"Akiva also said that while all the writings of our Writ are holy, Shir Hashirim is the Kodesh Kodashim - the Holy of Holies, and that the whole world is not worth the day that Shir Hashirim was created. He says this because while the other books give important laws and tell important stories, only Shir Hashirim comes close to describing the love of God for Creation, and the love of Creation for God. Human love, human longing is an earthly embodiment of this love; it is the most deeply felt way for our very limited kind to experience the Great Holiness. And so human love, human longing, in all its forms, is holy."

"What?" cried Gabriel. "Surely you are not suggesting that what Leviticus makes abomination, Song of Songs makes holy? To claim that the right to engage in such conduct is implicit in the concept of holiness is, at best, facetious."

The angels in the CHESED section began to boo, but in a loving way.

"Yes, Rabbi," probed the Chief Justice, "what are the parameters of your position. Are you saying all human sex is holy?"

"No, your Honor. Only sex that is steeped in love. Only sex approached with an open heart. Oh, and sex that is really, really fun."

"Rabbi, the Holiness Code also prohibits sex with slaves, sex with close family members, sex that is adulterous, sex with animals. Are you proposing those prohibitions be lifted as well?"

"Those prohibitions are distinguishable, your honor. They address relationships with inherent power disparities, relationships where it isn't clear that both parties have equal ability to say 'no' - or even any ability. And the adultery prohibition reflects an awareness that there are others who might be hurt by the relationship.  But the provision we challenge today, Leviticus 20:13, has no mention of power disparity; not a hint of exploitation. It applies to consenting adults. And yet their holy act of love is punishable by death."

"Your honor," chimed in the Solicitor Celestial, "other laws in the Holiness Code that exact a death penalty have simply been ignored by humankind or commuted to another type of punishment. A child cursing its parents, for example, I can't remember the last time I saw one of them stoned - well, you know what I mean. In any event, I know it is unlike me to say so, but flexibility has been demonstrated in the application of the laws of Leviticus. Humankind takes many of these rules with a grain of salt."

"However," responded the sage, plucking some stray horseradish from his beard and absentmindedly removing it to his tongue, "in the case of this one particular prohibition, humankind gets uncharacteristically literal. The law is still taken at face value in many cultures and many places on earth, and in some of them still invokes a death penalty. And in other places the death penalty takes the form of violence in the streets or the suicide of young people. No, your honors, as for taking this abomination thing with a grain of salt, it seems much of humanity is on a salt-free diet. Ah, wait, I misspeak," continued Hillel. "One flexibility is commonly granted: women who lie with women, not mentioned in the law at all are, thanks to Leviticus, treated to the same condemnation in much of human society. Living in the shadow of this prohibition is a source of profound sadness; since Sinai humans have been pressured into marriages without love, from which many more people suffer. This law has brought on of a world of suffering."

"But your honors," thundered Archangel Gabriel, "even if this is so, it is for humans to work out. Let them make change however they go about making change. I don't understand what the rabbi here expects us to do about it. Shouldn't this unfold in a human way, country by country, society by society?"

"Your honors," answered Rabbi Hillel, "I submit to you that Leviticus 20:13 was not correct when it was given at Sinai, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent and should be overruled."

In the gallery you could hear a pin drop, and many dancing angels falling right off of the head of it.

Rabbi Hillel lifted his hands in supplication. "It is not for our sake that I ask this, your honors, but for yours. Words of Torah should give honor to God. And this law has caused good and holy people to dismiss you, and You, and Torah itself, from their lives. They have come to trust the holiness of their love; they just think that You don't. There is imminent threat to God's reputation here; you must take note. It is not for the sake of the people sometimes called "gay" that we seek redress. They will continue on and fight their fight along with their friends and families and allies, and they will keep loving each other despite, and they will make art and song about their struggles and jokes to make light of the indignity of it. And they will change the world, with or without you. It is not for them but for heaven that this correction must be made."

"But Rabbi," said Metatron, the Chief Justice, sounding now old and tired himself, "what can we do at this point? This has gone on so long."

Rabbi Hillel thought at this moment that something passed between himself and the Chief Justice. The Chief Justice, who was the only angel in the spheres who was once a man, Chanoch, a particular beloved of God, who could not bear him to die and installed him instead in the heavenly court, alive and immortal. The Chief Justice must be able to remember back to his earthly existence, his love, his longing, his long walks with God. The Chief Justice would help. The Chief Justice would cast his vote for Chesed.

"Rabbi," the Chief Justice called Hillel back to attention. "Torah has already been given. What relief can we offer?"

Hillel held Metatron's eye as he delivered his unorthodox request. "Your honor, in the rabbinic academies, we have a phrase that guides us: Eyn mukdam um'uchar batorah." There is no before or after in Torah. Erase this error now so that it will not even exist at Sinai. Undo it now so that it will never have been. Let the world unfold without it; let love prosper; let this particular hatred and shame never get born; see how a more loving world fares; see how--"

A flame came down from the sky to rest on an altar next to the Chief Justice. Rabbi Hillel sighed. "I see I have used my time."

For a moment, the eyes of Metatron, the angel formerly known as Chanoch, seemed lost in thought.

"Rabbi, a question from upstairs. If there is no before or after, why should we act now?"

"Because, your honor, if not now, when?"

The Chief Justice seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. "Thank you, Counsel," he remarked at last. "The case is submitted."


This drash is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Alan Lew. The last drash I heard him give was about this verse, and in it he reached the conclusion that the line of right and wrong had shifted, and that Leviticus 20:13 was now simply inapplicable, and not to be heeded. He seemed (or maybe this was my projection) dispirited that Torah process couldn't redeem this Torah problem. 

Many thanks to Reb Eli Herb and to Anna Belle Kaufman for their thoughtful feedback.

Guest Drash: Kashrut, Bacon and Higher Values

While I was off performing in Minneapolis last weekend, I asked Shari Brenner and her daughter Nora Brenner-West to leader Shabbat services at Ner Shalom. Below is Shari's beautiful drash on Parashat Shemini. Shari has a Masters in Public Health and has worked in health care, primary HIV prevention and services, for over 25 years.  She is the administrator of a large Community Health Center providing primary care services in the impoverished Latino neighborhood of Southwest Santa Rosa. She is also the recent past president of Congregation Ner Shalom and my good friend.
 

When Irwin asked me and Nora to lead services tonight, of course my response was “absolutely not.” Sure, leading services is just facilitating moving from one part of the service to the next, but the drash is the scary part. I could never live up to Irwin’s standards, could never be so funny, could never do the research he does, could never understand the parsha the way he does; I don’t even really know the rules for HOW to do a drash.  So I asked him how to start, who to read, what the rules were, and he said something like “I don’t read other people’s thoughts because I feel like I’m copying.  I just share my own thoughts, even if it often begins with how I don’t want to talk about what the parsha is about.

Okay, so I read Parshat Shemini, and let’s see how this goes.  This parsha has two major parts to it.  The first part is Aaron’s sons making some sacrifices and offerings, and the second part includes the rules of Kashrut.

The first part: Aaron’s sons. 

Two of Aarons’ sons made several sacrifices and offerings, following the specific directions that God gave them, using the right animals, the right type of fire, the right vessels and the offerings were accepted.  Then, they made an additional offering that God had not told them to make, and they were immediately and fully consumed in the fire of the offering.  This was fairly upsetting, as it doesn’t seem like they did anything wrong, had any mal-intent, or broke any rules.  They just made up a few of their own -- they just embellished a little.

I have no clue what this means, so I won’t talk about this part.

The second part: Kashrut. 

The rest of the parsha outlines the rules of kashrut-what animals, birds, and sea creatures can and cannot be eaten, and God tells us to follow the instructions so that "you shall be holy, for I am holy."

I have lots of thoughts about Kashrut, both about following the rules, and about food itself.  As Jews, these are two very important cultural concepts, right?  So let me share just a little about where I came from.  I grew up in a kosher home, following the rules.  We ate only kosher meat and never mixed milk and meat.  We had five sets of everything: dishes, silverware, sponges, towels, dish drainers.  The five sets were for milchik (dairy), fleishik (meat), milchik for Pesach; fleishik for Pesach, and a set of fine china – fleishik – for when we had company.

Whenever friends came over and tried to help clean up, they were invariably chastised by my mother for putting a knife in the sink, wiping up with the wrong sponge, using the wrong towel, putting the dishes in the wrong place, etc.  In time I learned to warn friends just not to try to help in the kitchen. 

I grew up in a kosher home, and I was very proud of knowing and following the rules.  I’m sure I didn’t give it much thought, they just were the rules and I followed them.  I followed them as my parents changed them a bit, but I followed their logic, so I followed any new rules I learned.

When I was 15, I got a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I learned that a kosher home means only the INSIDE of the home.  When there was chicken left unsold at the end of the night, I would bring it home to my anxiously waiting parents and sisters and we would eat it on the front porch. Okay, but the INSIDE of the house was still kosher, my mother insisted. 

Fast forward through the next 25 years, outside of my parents’ home; making and sharing homes with many roommates, a few partners, Jewish and non-Jewish, each home having different “rules” about food.  During those 25 years, I was acutely aware of every single morsel that passed my lips that was unkosher.  My emotions ranged from the rebellious “see, I can eat this and nothing bad happens” to feelings of loss, sadness, or maybe some guilt?  Perhaps some longing for the certainty, the safety, of knowing and following the rules?

Over the years, I inched closer to vegetarianism, even called myself an almost vegetarian, and got to about 95%, but never quite made the full commitment until Nora was about 3.  We were visiting Martha’s Vineyard, and out of the blue, she asked, “Mama, when you were little and you ate meat, did you kill it with a very sharp knife?” Later on that same trip, we were walking along a lagoon, when a large school of beautiful fish sensed us and hastily swam away.  Nora looked up at me, confused and hurt, and said, “Mama, why did those fish swim away.  Don’t they know we’re vegenetarians?”  Okay, my 95% vegetarian diet became 100% for the next 12 years.  That felt right, and was a relief, as in addition to not killing animals and decreasing my environmental impact, one of the benefits of a vegetarian diet was that I could keep kosher.  No more conflict.  My vegetarian home is a kosher home.  My timing was such that I was the one of the grandchildren who inherited my grandmothers’ dishes, because they were kosher dishes.  Sure, my kids would order meat in restaurants, but that’s no different than Kentucky Fried Chicken on the porch, right? 

Well, actually I was 99.9% vegetarian, not quite 100%.  Sometimes people supersede animals.  When my grandmother put chicken soup down in front of me, I ate it.  When my 85 year old Aunt Ruth served me gefilte fish, I ate it.  I have always been clear that respect for elders, and others’ gifts, is a higher value than vegetarianism, or even kashrut.  But even those rules are clear, easy and comfortable to follow.

Many of you know that my daughter, Cybele, was quite sick last spring, and she spent about 2 weeks on a ventilator, heavily sedated.  With the prayers, support and love of so many of you here, I held only the vision that she would make a complete recovery, which she has.  But during that time, I continually wondered what she would think, what she would say, when the tubes came out and she could talk.  Well, it turned out that she had something very important to say.  She said, “Bacon!”

That single word rocked my world.  My comfort, relief and identity as a vegetarian were challenged by the needs of the daughter that I might have lost.  Well, what’s a Jewish mother to do? I gave her bacon. When we returned to my home, I served her bacon.  And all the meat she wanted.  Clearly her body was telling her, telling me, what it needed.  Who’s to argue with such certainty, such clarity?

Well, if you can’t beat em, join em.  I joined Cybèle, and others in my household, in eating meat.  The world didn’t end.  Some of it even tasted really, really good.  But over time, I found that same old nagging discomfort that I’d had before was growing, and was quite relieved when the date of Jan 1 that I chose to return to vegetarianism came.

So, back to the question of what is a higher value?  Following the rules as we always have, or updating or embellishing them?  Or taking a brief hiaitus from them, so we can really appreciate them?  Following the rules of Kashrut as they are written in the Torah, even with thousands of years of interpretation and re-interpretation, somehow feels right to me.  Making an exception in those rules for gifts from elders and hosts feels right to me.  Making an exception at an exceptional time felt right to me. 

But now I can’t help but thinking about Aaron’s sons.  They did what God told them to do, and then they did a little more.  And it was for that little more that they were punished.  We have no reason to believe that their updating, their embellishing of the rules was anything other than a desire to be even more holy.  A desire to go even further than they were instructed, to add their own value and maybe even their own values to what they were doing.

As Reconstructionist Jews, we are constantly searching for meaning in the rules, replacing the word “rule” with “tradition”; picking and choosing the ones we want to follow; proudly updating them to give them meaning in our lives; constantly searching for new definitions of sacred and holy.  I feel blessed to be a member of this Reconstructionist Jewish community today, where we get to do this.  Where nobody will judge me as a “bad Jew” because I make the choices I make.  I feel blessed to be surrounded by each of you now, as I share from my own experience, as coached by Reb Irwin, and count on support from any of you as I struggle with what makes sense to me.  I feel blessed to be among you, knowing that each of you is struggling with many and varied rules, customs, traditions, questions; searching for value in your own life, and sharing your thoughts and path generously with others.

As we move through this Shabbat, this week, and our lives, may we continue to be surrounded by those who support us, and may we follow only the rules, customs and traditions, and embellish them in any way that gives our lives meaning.  And let us all say . . . amen.

Zecher Litziat Mitzrayim: Shabbat and the Remembrance of Things Passover

For Congregation Ner Shalom, March 15, 2013

As we planned this musical Shabbat, Lorenzo and I had particular ideas about some Classical Reform hymns of my grandparents' era that we might be able to reclaim and bend a little and present in a fresh way. We began doing our research and found that those anthems, which everyone thinks are really dated, are, in fact, really dated. For the most part, our hopes for a Union Hymnal revival night began crumbling, and we fell back to our default plan of just having a night of beautiful music.

Then Gale Kissin stepped in. Gale's custom is to find music that excites her, rehearse it with the band, and then let me in on it. That gives me the holy challenge of figuring out how the various usually secular, sometimes sad, always beautiful songs, often in Yiddish, can function to prop up a night of Shabbos ritual. Sometimes that's hard to do, although mostly I'm the only one who sees the bumps, since mostly we're awash in the beauty of the music itself more than we are figuring out what prayer thematic it is supposed to relate to.

So this time I asked Gale, "What are you thinking of playing," and she told me that her band, Mama Loshn, was freshly rehearsed and ready to go on a variety of songs related to Pesach and our long-rehearsed story of liberation from bondage in the narrow land of Mitzrayim.

I found myself a little resistant to the idea, as Gale will attest from the whiny emails I sent her about whether this music wouldn't just be better for the Seder. Of course, Gale and I have enough of a relationship for her to know to ignore me; my complaints are the birth pangs of ideas, and all she has to do is sit tight.

So I began to wonder about my own resistance. I shouldn't be resistant. First of all, I find ancient Egypt interesting; I took a semester of Egyptian history in college, plus a full year of Classical Egyptian language, which has, alas, over the intervening decades, eroded into cocktail party chit-chat about hieroglyphics and bad snippets of jokes, such as singing "I got plenty Akhenaten" whenever there's a suitable setup. But that said, ancient Egypt has been an object of interest for me; and you all know how much I love Torah. So why am I resistant to another retelling of our ancient enslavement and flight to freedom?

I realized suddenly that it was a Pesach spillover effect. We tell the Exodus story on Pesach and I've frankly come to have mixed feelings about the holiday. It was once my very favorite. As a child, I loved seder, even though it was done in a kind of rote manner; nonetheless I was with grandparents and great aunties around a table doing a fancy ceremony and I was happy. Then as a young adult I began to appreciate how I could exercise my compulsive Virgo tendencies through the yearly ritual of cleaning and kashering the kitchen. And I loved the special diet, a daily reminder and signal of my Jewishness. I've never been a regular kippah wearer, but during Pesach I was revealed to the world as a Jew by the unmistakable trail of matzah crumbs wherever I went. In my twenties and early thirties I would attend or host seders that would go on until three in the morning, with singing and poetry and debate and the kind of fellowship that you only experience in the middle of the night after hours of group effort and perhaps one or two more than the customary four glasses of wine.

But then came middle age, when life became more complicated. Touring schedules that make it so that you will never have time to kasher your kitchen, at least not the way you want to; and worse, you will often arrive home on the morning of the day of seder, and hopefully you will have cooked and frozen some Pesach food in advance. And in any event, your seder that used to be so stimulating now has to work for the young children and the older children and the enthusiastic adults and the disaffected adults too. Your table will be filled with Jews, and there will no longer be enough non-Jews present to keep the Jews on their best behavior. And there's no more time to prepare yourself spiritually or to prepare a well-crafted seder. In part because now, at least for me, there's a congregational seder to prepare, which inevitably edges out the planning that used to be devoted to what happens at your own table. All in all, Pesach has, I confess, lost a bit of its sparkle.

And with my conflicted feelings about the holiday, so went the story itself. So now, when I hear about Pharaoh, or taskmasters, or plagues, I get sucked into a vortex of overwhelm and frustration and anxiety.

So: that was a big, if tangential, confession.

But in any event, I've concluded that my resistance is a disservice to an important story. The Exodus is a formative story. Right up there with Isaac being bound, or receiving the Torah at Sinai. This story is one so important that we retell it over and over. Not just in our annual Torah-reading cycle, but in our liturgy, for instance in the extended-play version of the V'ahavta, in multiple Psalms and, of course in the Mi Chamocha where every day we celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea. A story so important that we are commanded to tell it to our children, and we do so not at synagogue but around a table every year. It is a story that is supposed to live at home with us and suffuse our domestic spaces like the steam and aroma of Grandma's matzahball soup simmering on the stove.

This is a story that lends itself easily to metaphorical rather than historical readings. Mitzrayim as metaphor: enslavement, narrowness, oppression, injustice, fear. Everything that holds us back as individuals, as a society, as a world. And the Exodus, yetziat Mitzrayim, assures us of our ability, with some amount of chutzpah and some amount of faith, to break through those obstacles into the great wide unknown that awaits us.

But besides being a metaphor for our lives, there's another connection explicitly drawn by our tradition, and that is the relationship between the Exodus and Shabbat. In the Kiddush that we chant on Shabbat evening, the valences of Shabbat are explicitly laid out. We first call Shabbat zikaron l'ma'aseh v'reishit - a memory of the act of Creation. Shabbat is the pause that punctuated and gave final shape to that first week. Then we continue in the Kiddush: ki hu yom t'chilah l'mikraey kodesh. Shabbat is the beginning of holiness. It is the first thing mentioned in Torah that God calls holy. It is not the end product of holiness but rather the first occasion of it; it is what opens the floodgates of holiness into this universe.

Both of those understandings of Shabbat - creation and holiness - make sense to us; intuitive and clear.

Then we continue: Shabbat is a zecher litziat mitzrayim, a remembrance, a souvenir, of the departure from Egypt.

What does that mean? What do Shabbat and the Exodus have to do with each other? Shabbat is other-worldly, primordial. It was God's first thought and last act of Creation. Whereas the Exodus already takes place in another kind of time, within the much smaller scale of human history, or what we imagine to be human history. Shabbat has to do with our cosmology of holiness and time. The Exodus, at least on its surface, is about politics and migration.

How are they connected?

The rabbis would undoubtedly say that God brought us out of Egypt in order to keep Shabbat. They would say that Shabbat, though ancient, couldn't be practiced until there was a people who agreed to practice it, that people being us, in the desert, free at last, beginning our long wanderings.

But there's more to say here, because Shabbat is not just a day on the calendar, but is in itself the breath of freedom. The pause where something that has engaged you and burdened you stops and you perceive the difference. It is the sensation when, after a hard illness, you wake one day feeling better. It is the moment of quiet gratitude after you've fixed dinner and set it on the table and you finally sit down to eat, no longer the maker but the receiver. It is the sensation of relief you feel when you finally close your computer at the end of the day and you notice the cricket call outside replacing the psychic buzz of the Internet. Shabbat is not unlike the chord that continues ringing through the concert hall after the last note of a symphony is released. The moment of sad-happy-fulfilled directionlessness when you close the last page of the novel you've spent the last week with.

And the experience of Shabbat is not unlike the surprise and bewilderment and relief of the Israelites when they realized they were, at last, beyond Pharaoh's reach.

Shabbat is zecher litziat mitzrayim: either a souvenir of the Exodus or a remembrance offered for the Exodus. What I mean is that it's not clear which concept is the reminder and which is the reminded.

We can say that a way to get at the feeling of Shabbat is through the idea of the Exodus. Shabbat is a release from the narrowness of the week, in which we were enslaved to our ambitions, our struggles, our things. But it could work the other way. If you want to understand what the departure from Egypt might have felt like, but let's say you live in a shtetl in a country where you've never been free of persecution, where real freedom is practically unimaginable, then the way to imagine liberation is through the familiar experience of Shabbos.

Both Shabbat and the Pesach story represent a courtship with God, with the Shechinah. God called on the slaves in Egypt like a beau standing at the door, asking, "May I take you out sometime?" And on Shabbat, every week, the Shechinah arrives at our doors as a bride awaiting us. Both Shabbat and the Exodus mark relationship, even love affair, with the divine.

But I guess if I were to try generalize anything about this connection, I'd say that we are taught by our experience of Shabbat that there is a rhythm to things. Just as a sentence of speech arrives inevitably at a pause and a breath, so too the rhythm of our lives. And the rhythm of our societies. And our biology. And our cosmology. Every tyrant will eventually fall. Freedom will keep happening again and again. The days of our weeks and the years of our lives will succeed and supplant each other like Egyptian dynasties. We will build monuments with our hands and with our words. We will be our own slaves and our own taskmasters until the breath of possibility that we learn from Shabbat reminds us how to remove ourselves from the machinery of our slavery.

And one day our bodies will stop altogether and, we pray, what comes next will be freedom, spaciousness, relief, Shabbos. Forever Shabbos.

So let us sing the songs of our enslavement and our liberation, in all of our languages. Let us feel the rhythms of this life and this world, knowing that at the end of six days comes rest, at the end of pain comes release, at the end of struggle comes delight, at the end of our narrowest places a great and unknown land awaits.

Ki Tisa: Improvisation and Practice

For Congregation Ner Shalom ~ March 1, 2013

It’s spring up on Sonoma Mountain. I’m able to witness this rebirth every day as I drive up and down. The grass is dazzling green. The Sonoma State students are trying out Gravity Hill by day and making out in their cars by night. Much of my route is grazing land and every cow on the Mountain now has a calf at her side. And those calves are fearless – they will stand in the road and stare you down. And they are furry. And frisky. They scamper like lambs. Oren and I saw a calf chasing a snowy egret in a field just to make it fly, like Ari used to do with pigeons when he was little. Chasing birds just for the fun and wonder and power of it. As if saying, “Look! I run like the wind!” These calves on the Mountain are full of frolic even though we know they will end up as heavy-footed ruminators, eventually taking a full day for a single patch of grass or for a single thought; although who knows? Maybe they’re still impulsive and bouncy on the inside.

So yes, calves are delightful.

Unless they are forged of gold and danced around by Israelites.

Because here we are this week, once again reading the old story. About how Moshe goes up the Mountain to receive the law and is gone for 40 days while God gives over not only laws of conduct but instructions for the architecture and appointment of the ark and the tabernacle that will hold it; the mishkan, the holy Tent of Meeting that will be the place, says God, where God and the Children of Israel will meet. But meanwhile, in the valley, the Children of Israel also want to meet the divine and, giving Moshe up for lost, they demand a god now. Aaron asks them for all their gold, maybe thinking that such a high price tag would sober them up. But they are generous; they in fact give it all up, because they want god that badly. They give their most precious things, the very items that capital-G God was busy commanding them to incorporate into the decoration of the mishkan.

The Children of Israel dance around their new creation, and sing, “This is your God, O Israel, who led you out of Egypt.” God is furious. Moshe calms God, but takes his turn to be angry as he descends the Mountain and sees the spectacle. The Children of Israel are punished for their act of idolatry or infidelity.

I never know what to do with this text. I’m not very good with simple right and wrong lessons, especially in matters of the spirit. I don’t like being told there’s a right way and a wrong way, and that the wrong way leads to punishment. This is why I belong to a community like this one and not to communities that are more unyielding in their view of how things should be done.

I can’t help but feel sympathetic to the Israelites, because the wrongness of what they did is not completely obvious, at least not to me. We know from Torah that they will soon be crafting things of great beauty to facilitate the human-divine encounter in the mishkan. Altars of wood and hide, with gold and silver and jewels. And statues of cherubim, too. So it’s not exactly the making of images that’s the problem here, because images are about to be made at God’s own request. We also know from God’s words to Moshe up on the Mountain that there are many skilled people among the Israelites, gifted by God with tremendous creative talent and filled with God’s spirit. Wouldn’t art-making as an approach to the Divine be a natural impulse for them?

I’ll defend them even more. There they were, the Israelites, in the Wilderness, a place with no landmarks, with no certainty. Might it not be a tough time to absorb the idea of a God that is also without landmarks, without physical certainty? They knew from Egypt that you represent gods symbolically through animals; seeing the unknown through the known; they knew the goddess Hathor was commonly rendered in the form of a cow. And for this new god, this upstart who impulsively took them out of slavery? What better image than a calf? Powerful and a future source of nourishment like Hathor, but still young and fierce and nimble like the calves on Sonoma Mountain!

The calf wasn’t a denial of God. At least maybe not. The people were certainly doubting Moshe’s return. But were they really doubting the existence of the God of Israel? They’d seen the Waters part. They’d seen the pillar of smoke by day and column of fire by night. They’d heard the thunder on the Mountain. Their daily diet was manna from heaven. No, I don’t think this was an act of rejection of Adonai, but of worship. They were just using the vocabulary they knew for it. I don’t know about you, but I remain sympathetic.

Their crime, if there was one, was not idolatry, but impatience, impulsiveness. They wanted a fast hit of ecstasy, and they got it. We see it in their euphoric singing and dancing around the calf.

Whereas, in contrast, the kind of worship God was asking for, the instructions for which had not yet actually reached the ears of the Israelites, involved something more time-consuming and deliberate. The Tent of Meeting, that is the tent where God and the people would meet, was something to be constructed with painstaking detail and tended with constant attention. Lights to be lit at proper times. Concocting the right incense, and burning it, and only it, twice a day. Sacrificing the right creatures in the right season; their blood to be sprinkled exactly the same way every time.

In the ritual world God wants, there is no quick fix. There is only practice, repetition, discipline, the consequence of which is, in God’s words, “There I will meet you and there I will speak to you.”

God seems to want closeness, but wants that closeness to come out of deliberateness, mindfulness, practice, actions, even seemingly small actions. But what of the ecstatic moment? Isn’t that remarkable also? Doesn’t it excite us and entice us too? Haven’t we experienced moments like that? Are those, in our tradition, simply valueless?

Maybe not. I recently read a beautiful teaching of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism, and certainly no stranger to euphoric moments and ecstatic practice. In this teaching, the Baal Shem addresses the question of what happens when you have a mind-blowing God experience. Where your consciousness, your sechel, splits open and you have a glimpse of God’s unity and oneness and all-encompassingness, and it inspires you to this great love and devotion, because you’re grokking, really grokking a piece of God’s greatness. And this lasts for a brilliant moment – or a few. And then – poof – it’s gone. Your sechel is closed up again, and you don’t understand any of it. “What is that experience,” asks the Baal Shem.

So he explains by making a comparison to a shopkeeper in the market place. The shopkeeper sells sweets, and he markets them by giving out free samples. Think of See’s Candy or any Cape Cod fudge emporium. This first piece is free. And that first piece is also the last piece that is free. After that, the customer has to pay for it – with money that comes from and represents her labor. So the second encounter, the transaction for the second piece of fudge, is not something for nothing, but is a real exchange of value.

The Baal Shem Tov says that the brief moment of enlightenment, of God-awareness, is a free sample given milam’alah – from above. It is God’s free sample, and it is, in the words of Psalm 19, “sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.”

But after that first taste, we can only re-attain the experience milamatah – from below. Through our own labor: our study, our ritual, our practice.

“No pain, no gain,” says the Baal Shem Tov. When someone has attained their enlightenment through yegi’ah, or long, hard labor, their insights deserve to be believed. Just as we’d believe the insights of a longtime practicing Buddhist over an enthusiast just back from their first Vipassana retreat. Because we know the longtime practitioner has gone and meditated over years of cold mornings when she would have preferred to stay in bed. When she says this is worthwhile, it carries weight.

So the message seems to be that the God-hit is delicious, but it’s just a sample. From there it’s up to us. To establish a practice, maybe (hopefully) a Jewish practice, whatever that might be. I’d suggest it should be something inconvenient. Something tied to time. Unplugging your computer for Shabbat. Coming to chant circle not once in a while but every month. Committing to learning, as many Ner Shalomers have been doing through our Hebrew class or the countywide Introduction to Judaism class. Or committing to deepening your understanding of our forms of worship, as many Ner Shalomers have done by stepping up to lead services when I’m on the road. Or committing to an adult Bar or Bat Mitzvah track, as more than a half-dozen people in this congregation have just done. Or even committing to a regular personal practice of mindfulness and gratitude, maybe through learning Hebrew blessings for every occasion.

The Baal Shem Tov says, and I fear it’s true, that there is no substitute for hard work. There is no shortcut to the enlightenment, no matter how much pot you smoke or Ayahuasca you ingest. Sensing your Oneness with the Universe, meeting God at the Tent of Meeting, comes from experience, not accident. It comes with practice, not chance.

This isn’t an argument against improvising, chas v’chalilah. Improvisation is one of the things we do so well here at Ner Shalom. And, as you know, in my other life, my performing life, my skill as an improviser has specific value. But my best improvisations may come in the moment, but they draw from years of experience. I may blurt them out quickly, but I generally already know that they’re going to work. And the best improvisations? I repeat them, and they become tradition.

There are many ways – new, improvised ways as well as the age-old paths – to reach the mishkan, the holy place. But if you ask the question, “How do I get there,” the answer will likely be, as in the old joke, “Practice.”

So let us keep practicing and keep improvising – as a community and as individuals. May our improvisations come from an ever-deepening understanding of our lives and our tradition. May our learning be regular and may it fuel our creativity. And may the gold that is in our spirits adorn the place where we and God meet.

Yitro: Strangers in a Strange Land

For Congregation Ner Shalom, February 1, 2013.

I spent this last month as a stranger in a strange land. I had a two and a half week gig in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with an additional week tacked on in the lovely mountain town of Ajijic. I walked a funny line between belonging and not belonging, between distance and familiarity. We do this Puerto Vallarta gig every year. I know my way around; I know street names and some faces and where to get fresh vegetables. And then there’s always the new and strange; this time, for instance, how to manage sickness and fever and find the larger-than-life Doctor Lupita and her hypodermic full of good mystery drugs.

My Spanish is good; I can declare in the declarative, and speculate in the subjunctive. I speak better than I understand; but still I fared better in Mexico than I did yesterday morning at Friendly Kitchen in Rohnert Park, when a patron glanced at the newspaper and remarked to me, “Those 49ers sure are” followed by 15 or so words that almost certainly had something to do with the Super Bowl; words that I undoubtedly know individually, but which, when fused together in a wave of football jargon, left me utterly bewildered. I didn’t understand his words but his desire for a bond of familiarity with me was clear. “Yeah,” I said, nodding, hoping that that was all that would be required of me. I was home, but still a stranger.

This week’s Torah portion seems to have a lot to say about strangeness and familiarity, distance and proximity. The portion is called Yitro, named after Moshe’s father-in-law. The Children of Israel are in the Wilderness, having escaped from Egypt, familiar turf in which they were treated as strangers. Now they are strangers in an unfamiliar land, led by a prophet who is also a stranger, having never been a slave alongside them, and by a God who does not resemble the Egyptian gods; who doesn’t resemble, well, anything.

At the top of the parashah, Moshe receives his father-in-law, who arrives with Moshe’s wife and two sons. The text then reminds us of the sons’ names and their etymology. The younger son is Eliezer, meaning “my God is my help.” And Gershom, the older, means “a stranger there.” Moshe named him that because, as he famously said, “I was a stranger in a strange land.”

Gershom and Eliezer. “Stranger in a strange land” and “God is my help.” Strangerhood and help. Alienation and embrace. Distance and familiarity. These are the polestars by which the Children of Israel navigated through the wilderness and by which Jews have wandered through an alien world for millennia, so much so that our sense of exile has become a dominant theme in our self-concept; giving rise to Messianism and to Zionism and to puzzlement when my children seem, mysteriously, to fit in just fine. Alienation and embrace: the competing forces that tug on each of our souls – the feeling of being alone; and the desire to feel that we are not.

The themes of strangeness and familiarity continue to haunt the portion. God is about to impart the Aseret Hadibrot, the Ten Commandments. God says, in what sounds like a marriage proposal, “You will be my special treasure, my beloved people.” And the people respond, saying, “Whatever God says, we will do.” But this communication is not direct; Moshe carries the messages up and back like Miles Standish for John and Priscilla.

Then God demands that a distance be established around the revelation. First, a distance of time: three days between now and then, during which the people must prepare, immersing themselves and even their clothes as in a mikveh. Then, a perimeter of space: a boundary around the mountain, the crossing of which by anyone other than Moshe will result in a sentence of death.

Be my love. But not so close. Maybe the enforced separation is specifically to build the tension. Like couples staying apart before their wedding. And marriage is in fact the underlying metaphor here. Immersion in the mikveh; words of oath. And isn’t marriage about transitioning from the idea of Gershom to that of Eliezer, about strangers becoming each other’s familiar support?

So God descends – and Moshe ascends – to the mountaintop. Proximity. God sends Moshe back down to reinforce the perimeter. Distance. And then God gives the Ten Commandments, reciting them like wedding vows under the chupah of cloud and smoke.

Alienation and God’s embrace. I wonder about the tension between these two ideas. They seem so antithetical but so tightly connected. Does one require the other? When God first enters into relationship with Abraham, generations earlier, what was God’s demand? “Leave your home and go to a strange land.” Maybe the journey together into an unfamiliar landscape is what creates or cements a bond, experiencing strangerhood together. God and Abraham, Thelma and Louise, Butch and Sundance. After all, you never know someone as well as you do after a road trip.

Our human experience is a relentless road trip. After you leave your mother’s womb and your parents’ arms, you are on your own, with no map and no spare change for the fast food joints. Even if you live and die in the very house you were born in, you are always walking a wilderness, because time is that kind of road. You can’t see around the next bend. You change. You grow. Your body ages and so does your mind. Your circumstances change, and the people around you, and the world. We are constant strangers. How are we ever to feel safe? How are we ever to feel anything but alone?

Loneliness is a great source of longing and of action. Loneliness must be the reason we invented God; or else it is the reason God invented us. We need this relationship with the great Infinite, whether we ascribe to that infinity a personality or not, to feel familiar. To feel that despite the odds and despite all evidence, it has our back. Intimacy us how we keep ourselves – and God – from being overwhelmed by fear as we journey forward. As the Psalm says, gam ki elech b’gey tzalmavet, lo ira ra ki atah imadi. Though I walk through a valley shadowed by death, I won’t fear if you are with me.

The desire to be cared for is reasonable. So how do we make it happen? How do we bring about God’s care, God’s help, in the face of our sense of aloneness? The mystic, Rabbi Joseph Cordovero, said 500 years ago that by our own actions, acting with chesed – with kindness – toward the suffering of the stranger, we bring down that same quality of kindness in the Divine. Imitate what you want from God and it will manifest for you as well. Or translated into practical terms, kindness begets kindness.

Which then sounds less mystical and downright Reconstructionist. We are God’s hands in bringing about compassion in this world. We know how to care for the stranger. Torah tells us no fewer than 36 times. Empathizing with how a stranger feels can set your compassion in motion. Imagining how the person sitting next to you might feel like a stranger at this moment; that might invoke your protectiveness and your care. Of course, sometimes we can’t find our compassion for the stranger; not every stranger is equally lovable. So we try our best and then offer ourselves some compassion for having felt like a lost wanderer in that effort.

So what else? How else might we experience the closeness of the Divine though we feel like strangers?

The parashah gives us a little clue at the end. After announcing all the Ten Commandments, amidst thunder and smoke and the sound of horns, God and Moshe spirit off for a little post-mortem or, perhaps this weekend, I should say a little Monday morning quarterbacking. God revisits the commandment not to make any graven images, and expands on it. God says, “Tell the Children of Israel not to make any gods of silver or any gods of gold. Instead, make me an altar of earth and sacrifice on it; in every place where I cause my name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you.”

In other words, I think, don’t go chasing after God; don’t try to tame God by making rigid reductions of Divinity out of gold or silver. How, after all, can you force the great mystery of this Universe into such a limited form, whether made of a precious metal or an unyielding and too-small theology? Instead, don’t try to capture God at all. Keep your altar simple. Made of your own earth, your own life. Offer up your thanks or your wonder or your need. Mention God. And wait. Sit back, and let the Mystery introduce itself to you, so you can be on a first name basis with it.

Gershom and Eliezer might be among the names offered. I am a stranger and will always be. And still, I am held by God. These are my names. These are all of our names. And these are both true.

May we all journey our journeys without fear, without panic. And may we be open to the familiar and comforting touch of the Great Mystery, whenever and however it happens.

Solstice 2012: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

For Congregation Ner Shalom, Submitted in Absentia 
 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. That’s how the song goes. And I was looking forward to this most wonderful, ecumenical evening that we share each December: the chanting and the chill air and the connection with spirited people representing a range of traditions, whether they were born into them or arrived at them later in life.

I had some things in mind that I had wanted to talk about tonight, having to do with the darkness of Solstice; the long night that is like the end of the world. Because really, when the sunlight gets so short, and shorter every day, how can you be so certain it will ever come back? That certainty is a kind of faith. Based in experience, yes. But not so very different from the faith many of us feel that the light will return when we find ourselves in metaphorical darkness. No wonder it is so important to mark this longest night, and to celebrate it with light. The Christians got it right when they assigned the birth of God-in-human-form to this week. And we get it more or less right with our festival of lights, snuggling as close to Solstice as we can given the limitations of our lunar way of doing things. It is darkness giving way to hope.

This time of year feels like an end; we’ve reflected that in our secular but still ancient calendar. And this year many people are taking literally the endy-ness of it, as we observe the expiration of the Mayan calendar. And I, not knowing when today the end of the world was scheduled to take place, was not entirely certain how much effort to put into a drash.

Still, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. America is on the move, and my mother and I, like thousands of others, find ourselves stranded at an airport instead of at shul with you. The entire US military is on holiday furlough, and they are all sitting in O’Hare Airport’s food court, eating their Manchu-Wok rations as they head home to families scattered across the country.

One such young man was sitting next to us this morning at a communal table. I use the term “man” advisedly. Had he not been in his Navy uniform, I’d have guessed him to be 16 at best. But he seemed curious about us and struck up a little small talk with my mother who, as many of you know, is a small-talk magnet in public places. He is stationed in Hawai’i. He is heading to Connecticut to his father and stepmother. New Haven. Christmas. “Do you celebrate Christmas?” he asked us.

“No, we’re Jewish,” I said. “Our winter holiday is already over. We’re just looking forward to the quiet time.”

“Ah,” he said, looking momentarily at a loss. “When I was little I didn’t care about Christmas. Just about the presents. But then I began appreciating Jesus and would say, ‘Thank you Jesus for being born.’ And now I’ve let Jesus into my life.”

“Ah,” I said, my mind already racing with how to handle where this was obviously going.

“I hope you’ll think about letting Jesus into your life,” he concluded.

“Well,” I said, not wanting to completely dash his innocent hopes for my salvation, “we’ll give it thought. Thanks.” And I began dealing cards to my mother in hopes that our game of double solitaire would neatly sew up the situation. But he continued to chat.

“So where do you live? Where are you going?” he asked.

“Well, my mother lives here in Chicago. I live in California with my husband and children, and she’s coming home with me to visit her grandchildren.” I offered this information because in my experience there’s no better response to the suggestion of letting Jesus into your life than flinging back the revelation of your same-sex marriage. Maybe the blessing of homosexuality could serve, where double solitaire couldn’t, to put an end to this moment of increasingly awkward interfaith relations.

But no such luck. Our sailor continued. “Well, I hope you’ll read some of what Jesus wrote and let him into your life.” And he looked at me eagerly, at the edge of his seat, waiting for my moment of enlightenment.

I was dealing out the next hand now, my oft-persecuted Jewish blood pumping defensively through my veins. I briefly entertained the possibility that this stranger was Elijah the prophet, showing up, as always, in disguise to test my compassion. But then I reasoned that Elijah probably wouldn’t require me to go as far as accepting Jesus as my personal savior as an act of tzedakah. So I made the decision – perhaps not the best one – to address this head on.

“So listen,” I said, “I appreciate how much finding Jesus has meant to you. I’ve read plenty of Jesus’ words myself, and I think he had some fantastic and radical things to say. But I don’t believe he is God or the son of God.” This is where I wish I had said, “I don’t believe he is the child of God any differently than we all are.” Instead I continued, figuring one’s got to learn this at some time or other, “it’s really not polite to push your religious beliefs on others.”

“Well, I’m not trying to force it on you,” he said, “I was just offering this as a suggestion.”

“We’re strangers,” I said. “You don’t know us. You don’t know if we have religion in our lives or how we find meaning. It was fine for you to offer it once, but then you have to stop. I’m happy for you, and I wish you safety and many blessings. But you have to stop now. It's not polite.” (It is perhaps the depth of feeling we have about our spiritual lives, the sensations that are so hard to articulate, and the beliefs that are completely impossible to defend rationally that make us retreat to the position of religious talk being "impolite." It's not impolite really. It's just too difficult.)

He instantly became despondent, worrying that he'd offended us, and I felt like I’d just kicked a puppy. Plus he’s in the Navy and I’d violated our strict American rules of deference and decorum toward service members. I tried to defuse his anxiety and my own prickliness by changing topics and explaining to him how to play double solitaire, all the time worrying that he would now think Jews care more about playing cards than about either salvation or the national defense.

So how do we live in a pluralistic society? Is such a thing possible? How do we make it okay for people to believe different things, and draw meaning from different sources? We shouldn’t have to just shut up, should we? Should I have just shut up? Should he? We should each be able to speak our own truth, with enthusiasm and excitement and somewhere in the middle our words should be able to meet.

But let’s say I have a special investment in how I think God talked to Moses – or Jesus or Mohammad or Joseph Smith for that matter – how do I express my enthusiasm without implying that my way is better? Or worse – if my beliefs dictate that your actions are wrong, how do I stay silent? If I really believe Jesus is the only path to salvation, how do I stand idly by while my neighbor in the food court says, “No, thank you, I’m busy playing cards.” In a worldview in which the darkness could come and swallow us up at any moment, and this time for good, how do I not offer the hand of hope to a stranger?

There is no answer for this. The dilemma holds true whether you’re a born-again Christian, or born-again Muslim, or a born-once-and-for-always Chasid. How do you tone it down when your God tells you you’re right?

And then all of us who choose the pluralistic position – that all these paths have validity, all are sacred – well, don’t we just get a little tired of being thought of as everybody's lost sheep?

How can we all delight in each other’s inspiration, like we do here on this night at Ner Shalom, without anyone having to come out on top?

As I dealt the cards, I explained to my young interlocutor how one plays multiple solitaire. “There are mixed goals,” I told him. “Yes, you want to win, you want to play more cards than anyone else. But you can only do that if everyone has a good game. It’s both competitive and collaborative, and you have to hold both of those intentions as you play. That’s what makes it sometimes confusing and that’s what makes it fun.”

Only now do I realize that the game was conveniently offering itself up in that very moment as a suggestion for how we might live together in this world, even if we have strong beliefs. Of course you must be committed to your own hand; you must have hope for your own hand; that is natural. But the game is more satisfying for you – and everyone – when you can accept the integrity of other players’ hands, and root – even just a little bit – for their success as well.

We’re ready to board now. The terminal is packed. Babies are crying. People are spilling their salads and talking on their cell phones. It is a great cacophony of voices and experiences and outlooks. This is a crowded world, so crowded, and everyone is just trying to get home.

May we all find our paths, whether they’re non-stop flights or circuitous routing from stop to stop. And may a light, of whatever shape or hue, be waiting in the window for us at journey’s end. I wish you all a beautiful Solstice, and joy in all your holidays, and a peaceful Shabbat which is, I think, the most wonderful time of the year. But I’m biased.