Op-Ed Columnist - Islam and the Two Americas - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - Islam and the Two Americas - NYTimes.com
In yesterday's Op-Ed, Ross Douthat offers more on the debate that I suspect will rage for some time. He begins: "There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims. But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly." And then concludes, "By global standards, Rauf may be the model of a 'moderate Muslim.' But global standards and American standards are different. For Muslim Americans to integrate fully into our national life, they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as 'an accessory to the crime' of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June). And they’ll need leaders whose antennas are sensitive enough to recognize that the quest for inter-religious dialogue is ill served by throwing up a high-profile mosque two blocks from the site of a mass murder committed in the name of Islam. They’ll need leaders, in other words, who understand that while the ideals of the first America protect the e pluribus, it’s the demands the second America makes of new arrivals that help create the unum." That about sums up my mixed emotions!  On the one hand I believe that what helped my great grandparents make a home here was the American insistence that all religions are free to worship as they please.  On the other hand I recognize that what helped my grandparents succeed was their desire to become more American.  9-11 and this mosque may very well prove to be a fault line between these two impulses.

Shoftim

This week’s Torah portion begins: “You shall appoint justices and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall judge the people with due justice.  You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. (Deuteronomy 16:18-19)

Last week Elena Kagan became a Supreme Court Justice.  In affirming this duty she took the following oath of office,  “I, Elena Kagan do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and grant equal rights to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as Associate Justice under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

There is a great deal of confluence between our American system of justice and that of the Jewish tradition. Both begin with a written text: the Constitution and the Torah.  Both are dependent on interpreters (judges and rabbis) to explain how we are to live by their laws.  In order for an ancient text to remain relevant it must be open to interpretation.

The Torah prohibits work on Shabbat.  The rabbis spent centuries interpreting the definition of prohibited work.  The Torah forbids the “boiling of a kid in its mother’s milk.”  The rabbis determined that this means you cannot eat a cheeseburger, must wait hours before eating milk products after eating meat and that you must have separate meat and milk dishes.  The Torah commands tzedakah.  The rabbis interpreted to whom we must give and how much we should give.  The Torah offers the famous phrase, “an eye for an eye...” The rabbis developed the principal of compensatory damages.  There is much in the Torah that requires interpretation for us to live by its words.

The Supreme Court interpreted the fourteenth amendment to provide a right to privacy that is the basis for our laws permitting abortions.  Decades of Supreme Court rulings clarified how capital punishment does not transgress the clause of “cruel and unusual punishment.”   Again it was the Supreme Court that interpreted our laws to say that “separate but equal” is false and that racial segregation has no place in public education. During her confirmation hearings many questions were asked of Elana Kagan dealing with her view on judicial precedent.  Why?  It is because our system is built on accepting prior court precedents.  To overturn a previous Supreme Court decision is a radical step.  To do so implicitly attacks the system of interpretation and its interpreters.  Gershom Scholem suggested that in a text based tradition innovation must be dressed up as interpretation.

It is therefore curious that liberal Jews argue against many rabbinic interpretations of Torah law, suggesting that the rabbis went too far in their interpretations.  They use the words of the self-conscious Talmud against itself, arguing that the laws of Shabbat are indeed a “mountain suspended by a thread.”  Centuries of interpretations obscure the core ideas contained in the Torah.  Conservatives argue that the authors of the Constitution never intended a right to privacy, the Miranda warning, or such a stark and absolute line between religion and state.  Interestingly, conservatives argue against what they view as judicial activism in Supreme Court rulings while viewing the Talmud as authoritative in their Jewish lives.  Liberals on the other hand argue against centuries of rabbinic precedent but in behalf of such Supreme Court interpretations.  What are we to make of these apparent intellectual inconsistencies?  When do we rely on the interpreters and their interpretations?  And when do we hearken back to the intent of the original text?

I pray that Associate Justice Kagan, along with her judicial colleagues, interprets our Constitution in a manner that serves the public good.  I pray that our country might live by the Torah’s words, “Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  (Deuteronomy 16:20)

Reeh Discussion

At Shabbat Services we discussed the mitzvah of tzedakah contained in this week's Torah portion.  Many questions were raised.  How do you determine a person's need?  Is it simply a matter of what s/he says s/he needs?  What if s/he refuses the offer of food or clothing and insists only on money?  Despite these praticial difficulties, Judaism counsels that it is our responsibility to support the needy.  Tzedakah is a fundamental commandment.  While it is our social responsibility to give tzedakah to those less fortunate than ourselves Judaism does not believe in a socialist ethic.  We must care for others, but we are not to impoverish ourselves in these efforts.  Most importantly, we discovered in Maimonides' ladder of tzedakah, that tzedakah is first and foremost about the recipient.  The giver's feelings are secondary.  The essence of tzedakah is about its root, tzedek--justice.  It is not about the charitable spirit but instead about re-balancing injustices and pursuing the path of justice.  We give to others because we must help others.

Why Jews Should Support Mosque Near Ground Zero

Guest Voices: On Faith at Washingtonpost.com by Rabbis David Ellenson and Robert Levine
The authors conclude:

Since 9/11, many Muslims have felt similar broad brush rejection just because they practice the faith of Islam. No distinctions among Muslims are made by their critics. Blame and derision are unconscionably hurled upon an entire faith. History has well taught us how indecent and immoral it is when an entire faith group is held culpable for the acts of a few.

An Islamic Center and mosque north of Ground Zero will make the powerful statement that persons of all religious faiths can stand together as children of God. Historic memory requires us to behave with simple decency and affirm the proposed plan of our moderate and law-abiding Muslim sisters and brothers to construct this Center. We look forward to the day when we can join together with our colleagues of all faiths in dedicating this religious center which will represent the triumph of love over hate, humanity over insanity.

While I agree with much of their sentiments, the authors' arguments and conclusion confuse the legitimacy of building mosques in the United States with building an Islamic Center so near to Ground Zero.  It should go without saying that the government should never interfere with or prevent the building of any religious institutions in any location.  This is the essence of our country's founding principle of freedom of religion.  The question at hand however is the propriety of building a mosque at Ground Zero or for that matter, any particular religious institution at this specific site.  I would again advocate that only an interfaith center would be appropriate.  I appeal to the leaders of Cordoba House to transform their particular Islamic vision into a universal American religious ideal.  Let us together build a uniquely American interfaith center.

Start Up Nation

This is a feel good video about the roots of technological innovation in Israeli society. We would do well to take to heart the observation that Israel is a nation of risk takers!

Reeh

This week's  Torah portion Reeh discusses the mitzvah of tzedakah.

“If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman.  Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs.  (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)

In order to clarify this commandment, the great medieval thinker, Moses Maimonides, delineates a ladder of giving.

There are eight degrees of tzedakah, each higher than the next.
1. The highest degree, exceeded by none, is that of the person who assists a poor person by providing him with a gift or a loan or by accepting him into a business partnership or by helping him find employment.
2. Below this is that of the person who gives tzedakah to poor people, but the giver doesn’t know to whom he is giving nor does the recipient know from whom he is receiving. This constitutes giving for its own sake. This is similar to giving to a tzedakah collection. But one should only give to a tzedakah collection if he knows that the overseer is trustworthy and wise and conducts himself fairly.
3. Below this is a situation in which the giver knows to whom he is giving but the poor person does not know from whom he is receiving. This is like the great sages who used to walk in secret and put coins into the doors of poor people. It is worthy and truly good to do this if those who are responsible for collecting tzedakah are not trustworthy.
4. Below this is a situation in which the poor person knows from whom he is receiving, but the giver does not know the recipient. This is like the great sages who used to bundle coins in their scarves and roll them up over their backs and poor people would come and collect without being embarrassed.
5. Below this is one who gives before being asked.
6. Below this is one who gives after being asked.
7. Below this is one who gives less than what is appropriate but gives it happily.
8. Below this is one who gives unhappily. (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:7)

It is interesting and important to reflect on this important commandment of tzedakah. Judaism believes that giving tzedakah is about rectifying injustice and re-balancing inequities. The feelings of the giver are secondary. Regardless of how we might feel it is our obligation to help others!

In our own day and age we are confronted with requests from many worthy organizations and needy individuals.  How do we apportion our giving?  How do we decide to which organization to donate?  Do we agree with Maimonides’ formulation and his approach of a ladder of giving?  Notice that even the person who gives unhappily fulfills the mitzvah of tzedakah.  It is not of course number one on the list, but it is still tzedakah.  Notice as well that the highest form of giving is not to give anonymously but instead to help someone become self-sufficient.

Tomorrow evening we will explore this commandment in more depth.  Think about these questions.  Think about this commandment.  Email me your thoughts.  Giving tzedakah is fundamental to our Jewish approach to the world.   This why Jewish law dictates that even those who are dependent on tzedakah are obligated to give tzedakah.  Giving shapes the heart of the giver and transforms the hands of the recipient.

It is  through righteous giving that we will realize the promise with which our Torah portion begins.  “See, this day, I set before you blessing and curse...”  (Deuteronomy 11:26)

Mosque at Ground Zero

For several months I have been reading with keen interest the controversy surrounding the proposed Islamic Cultural Center at 9-11's Ground Zero.  The $100 million center would be called Cordoba House.  You can read more about the proposal on the group's website.  I have a mixture of feelings about this idea.

First the positives.  It appears that this initiative and in particular its leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a moderate Muslim who is at home in America and most importantly at home with its ideas.  He has as well been active in interfaith affairs for many years.  In an age where religion in general and Islam in particular is becoming increasingly radicalized we would do well to help nurture moderate forces who wish to integrate Islam with Western values.  I am even willing to support their efforts despite their apparent refusal to distance themselves from the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah.  I must say that I prefer and most admire denunciations of specific terrorists and their particular organizations rather than of terrorism in general.  Everyone hates terrorism.  It is the particular ideas that spawn terrorists that are more important to abhor and confront.  Nonetheless, Feisal's identification with the victims of 9-11 and his opposition to terrorism is at times moving.  I have hope as well in his Sufi roots.  (Sufi Islam is in general associated with an openness to other cultures and their ideas, as opposed to for example Wahhabism.)  The more we can help Muslims to become an active part of Western society and not feel disenfranchised from these societies the better for all.

Now for my negative feelings.  Where are the donations coming from?  This is no small matter.  Would we want a Saudi financed center at the place where Saudi terrorists destroyed so much?  (The 9-11 terrorists were by and large from Saudia Arabia, not Afghanistan or Iraq.)  Let us be clear, the United States does indeed have enemies, in particular from the Muslim world.  Money from those who preach against our values would be contrary to the proposed mission of the center.  Let's find out more about the center's supporters.  Second, Ground Zero is sacred ground, sanctified by the murdered blood of thousands.  I do not believe that all Muslims are terrorists.  To suggest this or even worse to suggest that Islam can only foster terrorism is discriminatory, but 99.9% of terrorists who attack Americans are Muslim.  I do not believe that Feisal is correct when he says that 99.9% of Muslims reject terrorism.  Part of the problem is this very point. If more people were like Feisal who stood up and said that terrorism is an anathema to Islam much would be corrected.  I want to support Feisal, but I have my misgivings.  Better that we should be building an America House, an interfaith, multi-cultural center that would serve all people.  The 19 and their Al Qaeda and Taliban sponsors attacked us for our very embrace of diversity.  The only appropriate center on this hallowed ground would therefore not be a Jewish center, or Christian center or Muslim center, but a center jointly run and financed by people of all faiths.

And finally, the name.  Cordoba, Spain was once a great cultural center, where Islam and Jewish philosophy, as well as Jewish and Muslim poetry flourished alongside each other.  In 1148, the year the great Moses Maimonides became a bar mitzvah, his city of Cordoba was invaded by fanatical Muslims, the Almohades.  They presented the Jews, and all non-Muslims, with a choice: conversion or death.  Maimonides and his family fled Spain, never to return again.  For the leaders of Cordoba House, they hear in their name the flourishing of Islamic culture in an open, worldly, and perhaps even pluralistic society, one that by the way continues to influence Jewish philosophy and poetry to this day, but one that sadly collapsed in bloodshed, religious extremism and intolerance.  To my Jewish ears I hear in Cordoba the trauma of my hero's childhood.  I hear him wandering for years before finally settling in Cairo over ten years later.

Let's change the name.  Let's change the location.  On this sacred ground let's only embrace the religious diversity that did not outlast the name Cordoba.

By the way you can read my earlier post on the subject here.  Then I had less questions and misgivings about the project than I have today.

Ekev

This week’s Torah portion, Ekev, offers us a classic formulation of reward and punishment contained in the second paragraph of the Shema:

If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late.  You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil—I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle—and thus you shall eat your fill.  Take care not be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them.  For the Lord’s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is assigning to you….  (Deuteronomy 11:13-17)

This formulation is troubling because it conflicts with how the world works.  It offers us a stark, and perhaps even harsh, correlation between the observance of mitzvot with rewards.   Simply put, if you observe mitzvot, you get rewards.   All of us can think of people who were good yet were not granted long life.

But our Torah, our prayers, state that the more you observe the better your lot.  We, however, see far too many examples where this is simply not the case.  The Reform movement therefore eliminated this paragraph from our prayers, and the prayerbooks we currently use, arguing that its words run so counter to reality that they cannot be our prayer.  How can we say something which is so manifestly untrue?

Yet there might be other ways of understanding this paragraph.  First of all the formulation is directed in the plural, to the entire people.  It is not a promise to individuals, but instead to the entire group.  We rise and fall together, as a people.  This paragraph is talking about our collective fate and lot, not our personal.  Second the promise is not about a person’s long life, but instead about our land’s fate, in particular the land of Israel’s long life.  We will be able to eat our fill because the land will be blessed by our actions.  Our observance is connected to the land’s bounty.  This is an important reminder during this summer of Deepwater Horizon.  If we do right, and only if we do right, will the land provide.  Especially in the harsh climate of the Middle East, reward is not measured in years, but in rainfall.  

Finally the brilliance of the ancient rabbis was to place the theology of Deuteronomy in our prayerbooks.  This act muted the paragraph’s starkness, and perhaps even transformed its theology.  By placing these words in the siddur, the rabbis changed a theological statement into a prayer.  And what a wonderful prayer it is!  I really, really wish the world worked this way.   I pray: the more good you do, the more good you get.  That is my most heartfelt prayer.

Ultimately, the question of reward and punishment misses the larger goal.  Moses Maimonides, the greatest Jewish philosopher, wrote: “It is not enough to serve God in anticipation of future reward.   One must do right and avoid wrong because as a human being one is obliged to seek perfection.”  This is our goal and our holy task.  The reward should be secondary.

Vaetchanan Discussion

At Shabbat Services we discussed the Shema and V'Ahavta, and in particular the command to love the Lord your God.  I asked how does one love God?  When is it easy?  When is it difficult?  The answers varied, but many agreed that love of  God is most pronounced when one needs God, especially when one is asking for healing.  When such prayers are not answered, when our struggles intensifies and is even lost, many feel it is difficult to love God.  This view is analogous to the parent-child relationship where the child defines love by needs.  I also suggested that there are those who profess a love for God but do not live it and there are others who live day in and day out a loved of God but find it difficult to profess.  We discussed two opposing views from our tradition, that of the Midrash who argues that we love God by loving people and the Sefat Emet who suggests that our natural inclination is to love God but the daily grind and clutter of living gets in the way.  I am unsure if the Sefat Emet is right and that this is indeed our natural inclination.  I worry that his view would lead us in an ascetic direction.  I oppose such tendencies and would therefore vote with the Midrash.  The only thing I can be certain of is loving others.  I hope this will lead me to loving God.  I believe that the only way to love God is to love others.

Faces And Faiths | The New Republic

Faces And Faiths | The New Republic
This is another phenomenal and challenging article by Leon Wieseltier. His critique of Israel's Chief Rabbinate is extraordinary and well articulated.

...The problem is the very existence of the Chief Rabbinate. It is a poisonous institution. It has diminished Judaism into an apparatus of the state and conflated it with power and patronage. It disguises low politics with high theology. Its resort to coercion in matters of belief is a mark of spiritual emptiness. In its outrageous pretension to central religious authority, it is a deeply unJewish office that would abolish the local and improvisatory and variegated character of Jewish religious life since the Sanhedrin. The Chief Rabbinate was not created by God at Sinai; it was created by the attorney general of the British mandatory government in Palestine. Many of its occupants (though not the one who was my cousin, of course) have been intellectually mediocre. It has become the most powerful instrument of the takeover of Orthodoxy by the ultraOrthodox, who grow wilder and more insular all the time: they prefer the Torah without Jews to the Jews without Torah [italics mine], and their lack of compassion for anyone but themselves is sinister. Worst of all, the Chief Rabbinate solves nothing: if it did not exist, the legal and denominational perplexities of Jewish life after the era of religious reform—the rupture, again—would still be with us. Two hundred years ago this week, in the town of Seesen, in Westphalia, “Jacob’s Temple,” a synagogue with a bell tower and an organ, was dedicated with a German chorale and a sermon about universal brotherhood—and there is nothing that any of the holy beards in Jerusalem can do about it.

This is the actually existing Jewish people. Insofar as the ultras in Israel do not believe in religious liberty, they are at odds with the state in which they live, whose Declaration of Independence “guarantees full freedom of religion [and] conscience”; and insofar as politicians in Israel pander to them and play their sordid games, they, too, are in defiance of first principles.“Laws do not alter convictions; arbitrary punishments and rewards produce no principles, refine no morals. Fear and hope are no criteria of truth. Knowledge, reasoning, and persuasion alone can bring forth principles.” Those Jeffersonian words were not written by Jefferson. They were written by an observant Jew in Dessau, in the most neglected classic of the Enlightenment, and the greatest Jewish contribution to it. Moses Mendelssohn established this wisdom in Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism, in 1783. In one of the more sublime coincidences of history, he was composing these reflections at precisely the time when Jefferson, a world and a culture away, was preparing his own argument, in Notes on the State of Virginia, that “[i]t is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”  The rabbis Mendelssohn and Jefferson.

Indeed truth can and should stand by itself.  It is in moments of desperation and weakness that we resort to coercion.  And it is then these very moments that push people away.  Coercion is the enemy of religion and faith.  Truth is our friend--even when it might be an ugly truth.  Read the article in its entirety!  There is even more there to discern.

Vaetchanan

This week’s Torah portion, Vaetchanan, contains one of our most well-known prayers, the Shema and V’Ahavta.  “Hear, O Israel!  The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

We recite this prayer every time we gather as a community, but have we ever paused to think about its meaning and ponder its words.  What does it mean to love God?  Moreover, how does one love God?  Love can be challenging and difficult.  This is why there are so many songs and poems about love, especially about losing love. The ancient rabbis recognized this difficulty.   So let’s turn to some of our tradition’s commentaries and look to the wisdom of our predecessors.

The Sefat Emet, a great Hasidic master, teaches that everyone wants to love God, but distractions and obstacles always get in the way.  By performing mitzvot, he taught, we remove these obstacles and distractions and let our souls fulfill their natural inclination of loving God.

The Midrash, on the other hand, notices that there are only three mitzvot that command love.  We are commanded to love the neighbor.  We are commanded to love the stranger.  These commandments are given in the Book of Leviticus.  We are commanded to love God later, in the Book of Deuteronomy.  The Midrash comments: this teaches that we learn to love God by practicing love of God’s creatures, by loving our fellow human beings.

In these commentaries we find opposing views.  The Sefat Emet suggests that love of God is natural, but life unfortunately gets in the way.  Get rid of the clutter and we will naturally love God.  The Midrash suggests that we must first love life and only then can we love God.  By loving human beings we will learn to love God.

Which commentary do you prefer?   Do you side with the Midrash or Sefat Emet?   Would you write another commentary?  How else might we learn to love God?

A Call for State-Sanctioned Religious Tolerance

A Call for State-Sanctioned Religious Tolerance
More on the Conversion Bill and the arrest of Anat Hoffman at the Western Wall by Rabbi David Ellenson, president of the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College. He concludes:

For Jews in both the Diaspora and in Israel who are committed to Israel as both a democratic and a Jewish state, these episodes call into question whether the state itself actually possesses those commitments. The impediments and restrictions placed before non-Orthodox expressions of Judaism by the Israeli government are matters of serious concern because they reveal that the State employs coercion and imposes a limited range of acceptable practices on Jews who have diverse conceptions of Jewish religious authenticity.
This struggle for Jewish religious freedom is a principled fight for justice that expects the state to be impartial in defining authentic religious Judaism. It is high time that the legitimacy and authority of different branches of religious Judaism be affirmed in Israel. This will surely enhance and strengthen the commitment significant numbers of American Jews feel towards the Jewish state.

Rabbis for Israel Mission Statement

Mission Statement
This is worth signing!  The statement says in part: "We, the undersigned, believe that Israel has a legitimate right to exist as a sovereign, democratic Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. We support a peaceful and just resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that will recognize two independent states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace, security and prosperity.  We call upon the Arab and Muslim world to accept unequivocally and publicly Israel’s permanent right to exist in peace."  Amen.

Creating Sabbath Peace in a Beeping World

Creating Sabbath Peace in a Beeping World - NYTimes.com
Great article about creating a sense of Shabbat in the modern world.  Here is one quote to tantalize: "'The second you write down the rules, it doesn't work for me,' Reuben Namdar said.  He believes that the Sabbath of everyday Jews, rather than the Sabbath of the disputers and the thinkers, was never as strenuous or elaborately thought-through as the Orthodox Sabbath is today: 'You ate well, you slept well, you had sex, you were in a special state of mind, you did not chastise the kids.  It was organic.'"

Tisha B'Av 2010

Tisha B'Av 2010 - Why Mourning AND Recovery are Sacred
I appreciate Brad Hirschfield's take on the video of a survivor dancing at a concentration camp to the tune of "I Will Survive."  (You can find the video at the below link.)  Rabbi Hirschfield writes:

In that spirit, I found this video of Holocaust survivor Adolk Korman dancing with his family in the very places where he was victimized 65 years ago to be truly beautiful. I appreciate that others may find sacrilegious what I find to be sacred, but how different is that than those early rabbis who were busy creating Judaism 65 years after the collapse of the Temple in Jerusalem? Like Mr. Korman and his family, they chose to celebrate life even in those places where they had suffered. Like Mr. Korman and his family, they sang and danced in the shadow of those places where they had seen their loved ones perish and their spiritual center burned. I am sure that then as now, some people felt that such behavior was tasteless, inappropriate, disrespectful, insensitive, etc. But were it not for people whose love of life triumphs over their sadness in the face of past death, we would never create a future. We need not forget the past in order to move beyond it. And that is a truth which Adolk Korman, his film-maker daughter and the sages of the Talmud all appreciated. I am grateful to them all.

His point is well taken.  The ability to dance and celebrate, despite tragedy and near destruction, is what has enabled the Jewish people to survive.  I hesitate to criticize a survivor, yet it seems to me that it does matter where you dance (and perhaps even when).  A concentration camp can only be a cemetery.  I think I would only be able to cry there.  I am thankful that Adolk Korman has survived and found the courage to sing and dance.  And so given that he is a survivor he can dance wherever he wants.  Like him I am not much for mourning, even on this day of Tisha B'Av.  I see not destruction and past tragedies but only celebration and dancing.  That is the only mindset that will carry us forward.  

Devarim

Franz Rosenzweig, the great 20th century Jewish philosopher, argued against Zionism believing that sovereignty would inevitably corrupt morality.

Recently The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof has offered numerous op-eds about Israel and in particular its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.

And this week’s Torah portion, Devarim, reiterates God’s promise to the Jewish people of the land of Israel: “See, I place the land at your disposal. Go, take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to assign to them and to their heirs after them.” (Deuteronomy 1:8)

I have spent the past two weeks studying Zionism and Israel and exploring the complexities of life here in the land of Israel, examining for example the morality of war and the difficulties of fighting terrorism. These are no easy topics and the sessions have been both enlightening and at times disturbing.

On Monday, I traveled with Friends of the Earth Middle East to the Jerusalem suburb of Tzur Hadassah. There we walked along the Green Line, the 1967 border and peered over this imaginary line at the West Bank and the settlement of Beitar Illit and the Arab village of Wadi Fukin. Beitar Illit is a settlement situated on the opposite hills from where we stood. It is an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Since its founding in 1990 it has grown to some 40,000 people. It is expected to grow to 100,000 by 2020. Below the settlement in the valley is the Arab village of Wadi Fukin, home to 1,200 people. In Wadi Fukin the residents primarily make their living farming the land. In Beitar Illit the majority sustain themselves through Torah study and government subsidies. We were saddened to learn that the sewage from Beitar Illit often runs down the hillside poisoning the farm lands below.

Friends of the Earth brings together Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians to tackle such environmental problems in the hopes of making peace through mutual care of the land. In this small pocket of the land of Israel they have made some strides in addressing the problems of Beitar Illit’s sewage and Wadi Fukin’s farm lands. I have some concerns about the group and in particular the ideology of the Arab members who I met, yet I admire their efforts.

I believe wholeheartedly in the Zionist enterprise. I believe as well that it is possible to live as a sovereign Jewish state according to the highest moral values. I am saddened when I discover such instances where basic human decency is tossed aside in favor of settling the land. The land is certainly holy and our return to it gives the Jewish people hope, but this must not take precedence over the humanity of those who also live in this land. Jewish sovereignty cannot only be about our rights and our privileges. If this is to be a Jewish state, it must first be about this, but if this is also to be a democratic state, it must not only be about this.

It is such questions that I have spent my weeks here debating. I have also learned that it is easier to debate such issues here rather than at home outside the Jewish state. Israel has its problems just as the United States has its problems. Israel however also faces unique questions. Only about this country do people question its very legitimacy and ask, “Is it wise to grant sovereignty to the Jewish people?” My answer is of course a resounding yes.

It is harder to speak about Israel’s flaws outside of the country. I am far more comfortable debating them when here. There, at home in the United States, we feel uneasy and perhaps even disloyal debating such issues. We feel we must defend Israel against its attackers because underlying these attacks lies this question of Israel’s legitimacy. But here sovereignty is assured and accepted.

As you walk the streets and drink coffee in the cafes the question seems silly and preposterous. And so the debate about values and morality is what animates this place. The argument with ourselves and with Franz Rosenzweig is a daily struggle that I admire and relish. It is what gives life to this land. It is this struggle that gives meaning to God’s promise.

Graduation Ceremony

Follow this link to read more about my graduation ceremony.  The occasion marked the conclusion of three years of study at the Shalom Hartman Institute.  I was named a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Institute.

Jerusalem Film Festival

On Thursday evening I again attended the opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival.  It is one of my favorite summer activities here in Jerusalem.  This year a French film, "La Rafle--The Round Up" opened the festival.  The film stars Jean Reno who was present to open the festival.  David Broza, the Israeli folk singer, also appeared to open the event with a few songs.  The movie tells the story of the round up of Parisian Jews during the summer of 1942, through the lens of a few families and in particular their children.  The film is not an extraordinary work of art, but the film and experience were extraordinary nonetheless.  This French Jewish film shows the active participation of French leaders and officials in the Nazi genocide.  It accurately portrays them as active decision makers, not forced accomplices.  It is most important that this have the widest viewing in France.  Even more remarkable was the experience of watching this film in Sultan's Pool, the ancient, outdoor amphitheater outside the Old City's walls.  Along with hundreds of Israelis I watched this movie.  Nearly everyone wanted to scream, "How could these French Jews not realize what was about to happen?"  We cried together (for almost all of the concluding thirty minutes) and then left the theater in near silence.  With hundreds of fellow Jews I watched this film in a sovereign Jewish state! Amen!     

YouTube Message from Jerusalem

Pictures from Israel

Enjoy the slideshow!  It contains pictures from a few of the sites I visited while in Israel.