Category: morality

Shabbat Shalom in a World Desperate for Peace

We wish each other Shabbat Shalom, with the image of Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body seared into our minds. This horrific image profoundly disturbs the peace we are supposed to welcome and embrace. The suffering of countless victims of war in places like Syria and Africa is unimaginable.   The willingness to risk life itself to escape gives us some measure of the conditions that exist in the places from which they flee.

 Europe cannot turn its back on these people and we here in the United States must also be ready to offer help to those that flee. Moreover, the world must be willing to address the circumstances that have created these desperate situations. The time to act is long overdue.

This is Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort. It is hard to take comfort now. It is not the external threats but the threats from within that are the most dangerous, the most discomforting. This has been a week of pain where Jews perpetrated horrible unconscionable acts of violence. We are all hostages of this perversion of Judaism. This Shabbat Nachamu let us struggle with the reasons why such atrocities can exist and what we can do to change this.

As I wish everyone Shabbat Shalom I also wish refuah shlemah to the survivors and deepest condolences to the families of the slain.

The long and winding road*… The End of Numbers

The long and winding road*…

 For us of the “older” generation, the end of the book of Numbers (Parashat Matot-Masei) should resonate deeply. Here we have the recitation of the forty-two encampments during our time in the wilderness, a lifetime of experiences recounted as this chapter in our lives comes to a close. We look back at the long strange trip it has been.* Is the land that was promised indeed the Promised Land and has the crucible that was the Midbar, or desert, prepared us and made us deserving. We wonder how this will play out as we move into the next chapter, which is the book of Deuteronomy. Have our experiences prepared us for the next phase of our lives? Have the experiences been worthwhile? Have we really learned anything along the way and how might we share it with our children? We can only hope that this journey leads someplace.

 But we know that this someplace is more than something physical. There is a spiritual and mystical component as well. For as we stand at the threshold of something new, we recognize that this “someplace” is the legacy that we are to leave to the next generation. Where we are becomes the foundation for our children. In the beginning of the book of Deuteronomy we will find the V’ahavta. The V’ahavta prayer remains at the heart of Judaism. It tells us that our encounter with God and the principles we have learned along the way are central to our existence as children of the Divine. And we are instructed to teach these principles to our children. Each of us hopes that we leave something of value- that our journey was worthwhile and our legacy will survive after we are gone.

 Shabbat Shalom

* Thanks and apologies to both the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.

To the mothers of Baltimore and mothers everywhere

My heart goes out to Ms. Toya Graham and every mother trying to raise their children and protect them from harm in Baltimore and everywhere danger threatens.

It is too easy for us to be critical in our quiet reflective and comfortable places casting aspersions on her character or questioning her parenting techniques. This was not her submission to white supremacy nor an homage to corporal punishment, rather this was a mother’s desperate attempt in the heat of a seminal moment to keep her son from spiraling into the horrible and destructive violence that threatened the lives of everyone in the riots and confrontation, including her young son. And in the moment, Ms. Graham admits she “lost it.”

 My friends of color speak of the breakdown of trust between police and people of color. They have shared the difficult and sad messages they teach their children of the special ways they must interact with police officers because they are African-American. They have shared the deep-seated fears for the safety of their children, only because of what they look like, to those who are supposed to protect them, let alone the challenges of living in a poor urban environment.

 Our society struggles with severe problems and social ills that need to be addressed. The issues with the police in the United States are a symptom of larger and systemic problems, which have been ignored for too long. The boiling over of pent up rage and anger should not surprise anyone. But engaging in lawless and riotous action in the heat of confrontation only risks life and limb. It does not effect change and likely delays or prevents constructive change to deal with these underlying issues, which have festered for years.

 Instead of criticizing Ms. Graham we should be demanding that she is given the tools and support necessary to offer hope to her son. We ignore what has been created at our own peril: a permanently disenfranchised underclass, without access to a life of peace, security, education, the ability to earn a living to support themselves and their families; A population living without hope or access to the life we hold dear.

 Some may find Ms. Graham’s physical act unpleasant, extreme or even wrong, but arguably she rescued her son Michael’s life. She had the courage to dive into the horrible sea of violence and despair and rescue her son from drowning. So although Ms. Graham “lost it,” in that moment she saved her son.

 Let us not be so quick to condemn Ms. Graham’s actions and turn instead our efforts to the important work of rebuilding our society. Let us focus on bringing the disenfranchised back into a place of belonging.   Let us work to promote justice and opportunity under the law and a system that protects all its citizens. Let us remember as a nation we are all affected, that the Michaels and Freddie Grays are our children. Now it is time for us to get to work.

My ambivalent relationship with Charlie Hebdo

Je suis Charlie, Je ne suis pas Charlie

Now that the dust has begun to settle around the recent tragic murders in France I wanted to share my thoughts.

My heart goes out to the families of those murdered while at work at Charlie Hebdo. The fanatical rage that drove the two assassins to kill cannot be justified. They destroyed lives and made a mockery of Islam. But my compassion for the people does not extend to the magazine known as Charlie Hebdo.

Our society embraces free speech as a fundamental virtue. What makes free speech truly free is not the defense of easy and virtuous speech, it is rather in the defense of the ugly and the difficult even the vile and despicable. It is here that free speech is truly free. Only if all speech is defended then all speech is protected, including yours and mine. Our caveat has been to limit free speech so that it cannot be the direct cause of harm to others; we cannot yell “Fire” in a crowded theater is the standard example offered. That is not the only censorship we should consider however.

We must self-regulate. Civility and decorum require we consider how our words affect others. That is based on a respect for our fellow human being and the knowledge that words are powerful and can inflict hurt and emotional pain. We often do not account for how our words impact others and we should before indiscriminately lobbing verbal or written bombs.

Charlie Hebdo is not my cup of tea. Its purpose appears to be to offend wherever and however they can. Charlie Hebdo did not single out Islam for disrespect and mockery; Charlie holds nothing sacred. The tabloid seems to respect little more than its own sense of entitlement and right to print whatever they could to offend whoever they could. This attitude effectively limits their bite. Sometimes there is incisive social commentary, but it is rare enough that most of us do not subscribe to Charlie Hebdo.

The magazine was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy; its circulation had all but dried up. Charlie Hebdo exercised the right to free speech and we exercised our right to protest it by ignoring the rag. That is how civil society deals with such things. Mocking everything means valuing nothing, including the right to express such things. Outrage over the mistreatment of one of the world’s great religions is however understandable. Carnage however, in the name of protecting the religion, does nothing but defile that religion and threatens one of the greatest of all human rights.

Thoughts for Shabbat

The swirl of events both at home and abroad makes keeping an even keel difficult if not almost impossible. The storm rages and calls out to us to react harshly, which can only add to the anger. Some may recall Jonah offering himself up to be sacrificed and when the sailors threw him overboard, the seas calmed. But that is not how it is here. Instead it is more like Nadav and Abihu, the priests and sons of Aaron who brought offerings ostensibly honoring God. But God rejected their alien fire and they were destroyed. The storms call out for more sacrifices but to give in would consume not only our offerings but us as well.

We are compelled to act against the injustice and the evil we see in the world around us, compelled to act against the injustice and evil that seduces its followers to do wrong while believing they champion a worthy cause.   Now more than ever, each of us is compelled to seek the wisdom of our texts, the Ethics of our Fathers, to guide us on straight paths. This Erev Shabbat, I share with you the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling:

 

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.

Shabbat Shalom

 

A Time for Somber Reflection

It is more than just bad policing

We are in the throes of mourning the death of two New York City Policemen, on the heels of the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. We are raw. Emotions have spilled like blood from deep wounds. We need time to process. We need time to grieve. We need to catch our collective breath.   We need time to come to grips with the tragic series of events that have shaken our country. What we do know is that the violence is overwhelming and somehow we must get it to stop.

The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have galvanized people across the country. Initial protests over the deaths of these two individuals increased dramatically in the wake of the Grand Juries not indicting the police officers involved. Uncovered a deep gulf between the police and the people they serve.

My concerns run deeper than whether indictments were handed down. There are other frankly more important issues that must be addressed. I am deeply troubled when a man repeatedly pleads 11 times that he cannot breathe and the police who have subdued him are unable to move from actively bringing him under control to actively engaging in the humanity of helping him once he was down. I am deeply troubled that a man’s body remained laying in the street for four hours rather than being treated with basic dignity. The lack of humanity is deeply distressing, and it goes far beyond bad actions of particular police.

Our problems are a deep divide separating whole segments of society from the institutions that are supposed to protect, defend and nurture them. Oppression is the result of the separating segments of society already prejudged as unsavory from the rest of “civil” society. It is more than a new approach to policing and re-examining the way our criminal justice system metes out punishment, as important as these changes are. It goes to the fabric of our country. It permeates our society and cannot be simply fixed by changes implemented at the top. All of us have responsibility to understand what is wrong and how we might change it.

Government can make the police of Ferguson look more like the people of Ferguson. But it is the people of Ferguson who must also invest in the infrastructure the schools and the families to build minds and to instill values. It is up to the locals and their police to be sensitive to each other. It is up to the broader society to bring economic opportunity and the possibility of upward mobility, the opportunity to aspire to become something more. It is up to us.

Marching is important if it serves as a first step to spur the people. Now the next step is to organize and develop goals and a strategy with political clout to effect change. And the rest of us need to support this work knowing that through this process we are all strengthened. This is the beginning of the next important phase of the Civil Rights movement in our great country.

The Attorney General of the United States seems as perplexed as many of us and has ordered a Federal Investigation into the death of Eric Garner. This might shed light on a process that many found disappointing to say the least. But this investigation cannot provide justice for Eric Garner; it is for our future. The civil rights advances of the past did not happen solely by new law or court order. The advances happen and endure only when there is sufficient will of the people to demand we overcome the status quo and demand better of our institutions and ourselves.

Our demonstrations proclaim “Black Lives Matter.” All lives matter. Everyone deserves to live. We are a nation of laws. And those laws must apply to all to protect the weak so that all may have the opportunity to pursue, free from violence and fear, the inalienable rights upon which our nation was founded.

But for now, let us take time to grieve and bury our dead. Then let us return and start the process of making change.

Shame on you Metropolitan Opera

Sometimes you need to dispense with the pleasantries and cut to the chase. Although we should always remain civil, the fineries of such conversation can sometimes obfuscate or dilute an important message. Such is the case of the Metropolitan Opera and its production of “The Death of Klinghoffer.”

This production of “Klinghoffer” is nothing more than an affront to us all. It is not art; it is a loathsome expression of the worst of humanity masquerading as art. It glorifies murder, terrorism, Anti-Semitism, all set to music. The Met should know better and we must demand more of this institution that has permitted its reputation to be compromised by staging this contemptible crap.

I have expressed this opinion directly to the Met.  Despite my love of this venerated institution and the extraordinary productions I have been privileged to attend in the past, I will not patronize the Met if “Klinghoffer” is performed. In good conscience, I cannot do otherwise.

In an open letter to Peter Gelb, the General Manager of the Met, rabbinic colleagues expressed their disappointment and dismay at the decision to perform “Klinghoffer.”  However I am neither disappointed or dismayed; I am outraged and flabbergasted by the betrayal of one of the great world institutions of art. I do not understand how the Met could be persuaded by any argument on the merits of “Klinghoffer”, for the production of “Klinghoffer” or how “Klinghoffer” could have any social value whatsoever.

I may not sound as polite or circumspect as my esteemed rabbinic colleagues, but sometimes such a response is inadequate. Sometimes a stern voice is needed to express outrage at the outrageous.