Drash for Shabbat Morning, Parashat Nitzavim

Even the Tradies

As everybody ‘knows,’ there are ‘Jewish’ occupations, and there are all those other jobs.  Jewish youth go to university.  They become doctors and lawyers.  Accountants.  Professors.  Scientists and engineers.  Entertainers, writers and producers.  Tradies?  Never.  You don’t see young Jews driving utes with all those toolboxes and ladders and such hanging off the top and sides.  And they certainly, never, become military men!  I mean, a Jewish mother would have a fit if her son announced that he was going to have a career in the armed forces.  And her daughter?  Oy!

          So, as a career military man whose brother was a career officer, I have to tell you that my mother took a lot of flack from her friends over the years.  Your son is in the Army??!  And your other son is in the Navy??!  She used to tell me of the conversations she had when she attended Hadassah meetings, or synagogue socials.  Either other mothers’ kids weren’t in such professions, or…they weren’t saying.

          (When I became a rabbi, I thought I was doing my mother a favour.  But then she would reported back to me that, when she told other Jewish mothers that her son was a rabbi, they would say:  What kind of a job is that for a Jewish boy?  Poor Mom…she can’t win!)

          So everybody ‘knows’ that Jews only go into specific career paths.  And when they don’t, when they become tradies or military men or God forbid, drift about between unskilled jobs, what do Jewish parents do?  They don’t talk about it with their Jewish friends!  They convince themselves that their kid is just playing around and finding himself.  Until he’s ready to enrol in uni and begin studying to be an accountant.

           But this week’s Torah reading talks of a different reality.  A reality where Jews pursue every occupation in the spectrum.  And where those who do work in less-prestigious jobs, are no less inheritors of the Torah, and part of God’s holy people.

You are standing today before the Lord your God.  Your leaders, your tribal chiefs, your elders, your guardians, every Israelite man.  And your children, your women, and the proselytes in your camp.  Even your woodcutters and water drawers.

          Now we understand that there is not an extraneous word in the Torah.  If the Torah forbids a particular practice, we understand that such a practice held attraction for at least some of our ancient forebears.  In this case, our reading goes out of its way to point out that the Torah is the property of the most and least prestigious members of the people.  So the leaders should not see themselves as above the law.  And the humble should not see themselves as too lowly to be elevated by it.  Ths tells us that, at least sometimes, leaders thought they were above the law.  And the humble thought they were too lowly to be elevated by it.  And the children, and women, and the proselytes?  If the rest of you thought that they were unworthy to participate, you were wrong.  Each and every Israelite, each and every member of the camp who chose to travel with the nation and who was going to participate in the upcoming conquest of the Land, was included.  All were standing before God.  Nobody was unworthy because of his or her place in society.  Certain members of the people – the Levites and from among them, the Cohanim – had special roles in the performance of the rituals that were seen as connecting God and man.  Even so, at the end of the day each individual stands before God Himself.  It is at once a liberating, and a terrible concept.  Nobody can stand before God in your stead.  It’s just you and Him, baby.

          Perhaps this is at the root of that fabled Jewish chutzpa, even by the humblest Members of the Tribe.  As reflected, for example, in the opening scene of Fiddler on the Roof.

          Alms for the poor, alms for the poor!

          Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopeck.

          One kopeck?  Last week you gave me two!

          I had a bad week.

          So??! Just because you had a bad week, why should I suffer??!

          People used to visit Israel and complain that the service at hotels and restaurants was lousy.  Jews don’t make good service people, they would say.  And the waiters and taxi drivers; what would they say?  What do they think we are, slaves??!

          The American-born Israeli author, Zev Chafetz, tells that the phenomenon of Jews visibly serving in every occupation was one of the attractions for him, of living in Israel.  Only after making aliyah did he realise that Jews do every kind of work imaginable.  Proudly.

          But that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it?  It isn’t that, except in Israel, Jews don’t work as tradies.  It’s that, outside of Israel, we pretend they don’t.  It doesn’t match our image of Jews, and how they earn a living.  Thank God we have the Torah, in Parashat Nitzavim, to remind us that every occupation is worthy of dignity.  Yes, even the tradies.  Perhaps especially the tradies.  Shabbat shalom.  

Drash for Friday evening, Shabbat Nitzavim

Syrians killed by chemical attack by the Assad regime

A Dangerous World

The part of the service we’ve just completed is called various things.  Sometimes we call it, ‘The Amidah,’ which means ‘Standing,’ because that’s the posture in which we say it.  We don’t kneel or sit; if we’re able to, we stand as if before God.  We also sometimes call it, ‘The Tefillah,’ which means ‘The Prayer,’ because it is one of the select parts of the service where we are not talking about God but rather to God.  Also, because it provides us with a model structure even though our personal prayers may be entirely spontaneous.

          Sometimes we call it ‘Shemoneh Esrei,’ which means ‘Eighteen.’  ‘18’ is an allusion to the fact that there are nineteen blessings in the weekday prayer.  The name ‘18’ predates the addition of the one blessing that bumped the number up to nineteen.  Despite the change, the name ‘Shemoneh Esrei’ stuck.

          The weekday prayer contains a series of requests:  for knowledge, repentance, forgiveness, redemption, healing.  There are 15 such petitions.  In the Shabbat and festival prayer, all but two are missing.  The retained ones are:  the prayer that our prayers be accepted in favour, and the prayer for peace.

          We don’t ask for the same long list of things on Shabbat and holy days; we imagine such days as being God’s days ‘off.’  But we do ask for peace.

          The word Shalom, translated ‘peace,’ means something far more than an absence of fighting.  It does mean that I’m not in fear of my neighbour killing me, but it means more.  It means ‘completeness.’  It implies that real peace is only possible when we experience a degree of completeness.

          In our Tradition there’s an implication that peace in this sense will come only in the Messianic Era.  The Prophet Isaiah predicts: “[The Nations] shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore.”  In other words, when this redemption comes, no one will be afraid of anyone else.  But in our siddur, the verse is mis-rendered:  “Let them beat their swords into ploughshares…let nation not lift up sword against nation…”  Perhaps it is a subtle difference, but I don’t think so.  The editors of Mishkan T’filah have taken a Messianic Prediction and turned it into an immediate imperative.  My complaint about that is, of course, that no amount of starry-eyed unilateral disarmament will change the nature of the world in which we live.

          It is in the nature of the Free World that we want to see every world event as a harbinger of the Messianic Era.  We become weary of war.  And why wouldn’t we?  We grow tired of seeing our tax dollars go year after year, decade after decade to manning a military establishment and purchasing machines of war.  We would like to dedicate these resources to the amelioration of our society’s many ills instead.  We grow tired of seeing the real costs of war:  the diggers’ funerals, and the disabled veterans.  It makes one want to cry.

             Many have been the voices that counselled unilateral disarmament, and a deliberate policy of non-violence in the face of any and all threats.  For example, M. K. Gandhi, the Father of Modern India.  I know that it raises eyebrows to criticise Gandhi in polite company, but Gandhi had strange ideas.  In 1938, he thought a war against Germany would be unjustified.  He wrote that German Jews should stand up and claim their rights as German citizens, and if they get killed, so be it.  He counselled against any organised partisan activity to save any portion of European Jewry.  He counselled against any organised international resistance of Hitler’s designs to rule all of Europe.  He would have had the British stand by and let the Wehrmacht land on their beaches.

          Gandhi was not the only revered figure in history to write things this outrageous.  Since I’m in an iconoclastic mood, let me add Martin Luther King Jr., to the list.  In America, they have just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of whose I Have a Dream speech.  I Have a Dream should go down in history as one of the most eloquent and moving appeals for sanity ever.  But his counsel with regard to unilateral nuclear disarmament in the face of the Soviet threat, was as pie-in-the-sky as Gandhi’s advice to appease Nazi Germany.  Others have counselled appeasing equally evil and dangerous regimes.  Why would someone think that evil can be appeased?  I believe that it stems from the philosophical device of drawing equivalence.  That is, the mistaken philosophical device of drawing equivalence, where none really exists.

          Gandhi’s enemy – actually, ‘enemy’ is too strong a word, probably ‘opponent’ would be fairer – was Great Britain.  Although 1938 was premature for predicting how and when India would gain her independence from Britain, perhaps the prescient could have predicted that it would have happened in a non-violent manner.  But Britain, even in her worst sins, has never been a nest of evil of even a tiny proportion to that of Nazi Germany.  To equate the two is absurdity of absurdities.  Suggesting that the Jews – really the world – should seek redress from the Third Reich in the same manner as that, in which Gandhi led his people to seek redress from Great Britain, is really breathtaking.

          The world is still a dangerous place.  Gandhi’s successors in India know this.  India has been a member of the small ‘fraternity’ of nations possessing nuclear weapons for the better part of two decades.  And she possesses all manner of conventional arms.  Because her potential enemies today are not the likes of Great Britain.  They are the likes of Pakistan and China.

          As if we needed a further reminder of how dangerous our world is, now the Syrian regime has killed its own citizens with chemical weapons.  And now we have a good idea what happened to the chemical weapons that most reasonable world leaders believed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed, but which were never found in almost a decade of Coalition presence in Iraq.  It appears that they were hidden in Syria, in the hands of the regime there.

          This is not going to turn into a drash calling for Western military intervention in Syria.  I feel the call of ‘Do Something’ as strongly as the next guy.  But that call, and the Western response, did not produce the desired effect in Iraq, and not in Libya.  I’m frustrated by the boldness of Syria’s Assad to gas his own citizens.  But I’m not equally frustrated by the reluctance of the likes of Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama, to intervene.  Maybe intervention is called for, but I don’t think we can agree on what form that intervention should take.  So I’m not going to use my pulpit this evening to call for action.  That’s a political decision, and as I’ve said before, I try to avoid making political statements from the pulpit.

          But I am using my pulpit to remind us all that the world is still, and will continue to be, a dangerous place.  It would be wonderful if there were truly an ‘Arab Spring’ to celebrate.  But it is folly not to recognise the ‘Arab Autumn’ that we have been witnessing.  Of course, we Jews have a particular interest in the upheavals of the Arab world inasmuch as they endanger Israel.  But the rest of the world needs to have as much interest.  Because the brutality of Syria is mirrored throughout the Arab world, the differences being largely of degree.  And by extension, through vast parts of the planet within the orbit of Islam.

          This is also not polite to say publicly.  But integrity requires it.  The conflict in Syria is particularly dangerous not because a few thousand Syrians have met a brutal death at the hands of their regime.  That’s bad enough.  But it is particularly dangerous because the rest of the Arab-Islamic world is simmering and could very well fall into the same conflagration.  And that would – could – lead into a worldwide open conflict.  Our guest speaker last weekend, Dr Daniel Pipes, does not think that this is inevitable, and perhaps it is not.  But it is definitely well within the realm of possibility.  It is something we should fear.  And prepare to counter if, G-d forbid, we face it.

Let us work to bring peace to the world.  Let us pray that each sector of the world that is experiencing deep conflict, the Arab world included, will see a breakout of good will.  Let’s counsel our national leaders to be ready to help broker it, if requested.  But let’s not dismantle our armed forces just yet.  Because the world predicted by Isaiah has not yet been seen.  Not even in small part.  Shabbat shalom.    

Drash for Saturday Morning, Parashat Ki Tavo

The Israelites bring their First Fruits 

Making Transitions

All of us experience change throughout our lives.  Some of us experience it so often that we might say, “Change is the only constant in my life.”  If that describes you, you know what I’m talking about.

Some change is unwelcome.  Some change is sought.  We seek change that improves our situation.  We seek change that may bring us happiness.  We seek change which represents the fulfilment of our very dreams.  So we often welcome change.  At least intellectually.  Because change is difficult emotionally.  Change must be negotiated.  It must be managed.  In our Torah reading this week, we get some good insight into how we can manage change.

I like to refer to the process of change, as transition.  When we move to a new condition, we tend to focus on the desired result of the change.  But the key to finding success in making the change is often in the transition.  Everyone in this room has been through several of these transitions.  When we left our parents’ home and forged a life on our own.  And when we were married, joining our life to that of someone else.

          Some of us have been through many more such transitions.  Perhaps we went through a divorce and then a re-married.  There you have two more.  The transition to parent.  When your last child left home, you went through a transition to ‘empty nester.’  If you moved from one country to another, you went through a transition known as ‘migration.’  And if you changed careers in mid-life.  And if you retired.  All of these are important emotional milestones, and each one of us will go through many of them throughout our lives.

          When we make transitions, we must find a way to put the past behind us, without forgetting it.  When we marry we must make room in our life routines to account for the presence of another.  Even if that other has already been an important part of one’s life before.  Being married – or in a permanent partnership – is quite different from dating or from sharing quarters.  It is essential to leave our previous status behind.  That’s the theory behind bachelor parties or their female equivalent, the ‘hens party.’  They mark the passing of one status just as the wedding nuptials mark the beginning of another.  There are ceremonies for other transitions.  Some do not have a fixed ritual, although some people when going through them, try to craft something appropriate.

In this morning’s Torah reading, from the 26^th chapter of Deuteronomy, we read about the procedure for bringing the first fruits to the Temple.  This ceremony will take place when the people Israel has settled in the land they will occupy and subdue.  When they will have produced their first crop.  They are being told in advance to take the basket of first fruits to the priest and declare: 

My ancestor was a wandering Aramean. He went to Egypt with a small number of men and lived there as an immigrant, and it was there that he became a great, powerful, and populous nation.  The Egyptians were cruel to us, making us suffer and imposing harsh slavery on us.  We cried out to God, Lord of our ancestors, and God heard our voice, seeing our suffering, our harsh labour, and our distress.  God then brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm with great visions and with signs and miracles.  He brought us to this land, giving us this land flowing with milk and honey.  I am now bringing the first fruit of the land that God has given me.

This procedure helps in managing the transition from slave, to wanderer in the wilderness, to landholder.  It does it in three ways.

First, and most obvious the declaration gives honour to God.  God assigned the land to the Israelites.  Even though they must conquer it, it is God who will give them the inspiration for the successful fight for the land.  Then it is God who gives them a successful first crop – or not.  So the declaration first of all gives honour to the One responsible for bringing Israel to this result.

We similarly acknowledge God’s role when we accompany a milestone by saying Birkat Shehecheyanu.  Where we thank God for “keeping us alive, and sustaining us, and for enabling us to reach this season.”  We say these words, because iff we really mean them, they help us put things in perspective.

Second, the recounting of our history provides another important perspective.  How can we appreciate our freedom and the plenty with which we’ve been blessed, if we forget our origins?  So the Israelite recounts those origins.  Then he’ll more likely appreciate his current prosperity.

All the politics about immigration aside, I think that we can all agree that new immigrants provide an important perspective for our society.  Even for those who went through considerable hardship in your countries of origin, it is difficult to communicate that in a way that will make it real.  But the presence of immigrants, who have reached this land at great hardship, and who then work very hard to succeed once they arrive, sends an important message to young native-born Australians.  Life here has been too easy, and too prosperous, for too long.  I’m guessing that the typical Australian adolescent or young adult today has no real concept of how she has been blessed by being born here in this country.  But if they get to know young immigrants their age – really know them – then they can experience this transition vicariously.  That’s why Clara and I always encouraged our children to make friends whose families were recently moved to our country.  It benefited them to have that perspective, and of course it benefitted the immigrant children to have friends who were more established.  The experience of immigration helps one to keep an important perspective about one’s freedom and prosperity.  When one hasn’t experienced it, they can at least listen to others’ narratives.

The final lesson that I draw from the procedure of bringing the first fruits, comes from its timing.  One does it only after having worked the land successfully, and having brought forth the land’s plenty, and the offering comes from the land’s plenty.  Only at this point is the transition to being a free people in one’s own land complete.  When one coaxes a crop out of the land.

How many times have we seen a land conquered, whether from outside or from within?  We live in an era where revolution is a frequent occurrence.  How many times, after a violent overthrow of an existing government, do the rebels or conquerors celebrate wildly?  By firing guns into the air.  By wild shouting and dancing.  Perhaps by looting the property of the former masters.  Or even killing them in gruesome rituals calculated to establish dominance?

Then, the new regime quickly ran the country into the ground.  They were great at overthrowing, but they could not govern.  This is in part because those who plan revolutions seldom plan for afterward.  They tend to be starry-eyed utopians.  If we can get rid of the tyrant, everything will be all right.

This brings to mind the recent, so-called Arab spring.  Egypt’s former strongman, Mubarak was not a good ruler.  He was what we call a ‘cleptocrat.’  His entire programme of governance was about enriching himself, his family, and his cronies.  He deserved to be overthrown.  But the people immediately let themselves be duped into putting the Islamic Brotherhood in power.  The Brotherhood’s slogan is, one man, one vote, one time.  Okay, it isn’t really.  But democracy is totally anathema to Islamists.  Their goal is a theocracy based on Sharia law.  This is no secret.  And yet, the Egyptian people, finally able to breathe freely, immediately elected the Brotherhood into power.  Similar results happened in Libya.  And will happen in Syria.  Because it’s all about the passion of the overthrow.  Not the nuts-and-bolts of life afterwards.

Our reading’s implication is:  it isn’t ‘yours’ until you make it work.  And there’s great wisdom in that.  You don’t make a country work by lynching the former ruler.  You make it work by coaxing something good out of the land.

This was the lesson for the ancient Israelites.  Give the honour due God.  Remember your past.  And make the land work.  Only when you do these things, will you be able to live successfully in this land.  As for the ancient Israelites, so too for us.  Our situation is obviously quite different.  But the lessons that were important for them, will profit us.  Shabbat shalom.

Drash for Friday 23 August 2013

The Pain of Suicide

               

As you know, one of my favourite themes is that we should stop whining over minor disappointments.  Buck up and get over it.  I realise that in saying so I might give the impression that I’m unsympathetic.  But I take that risk at times, because I think there’s no better ‘therapy’ for most of our everyday complaints.

          A few weeks ago, I spoke of how Moses got over his whining tendency.  One person who was present that morning, someone who generally expresses great appreciation for my drashot, came up to me that day. “Rabbi,” the person said. “Forgive me for being such a whiner.”

          I was a bit taken aback by the apology, which I thought was entirely unnecessary.  I’d never seen this person as a whiner.  A person with a fair share of sickness and real suffering, yes.  But not given to whining.  “You’re not a whiner,” I told the person. “You have legitimate issues, and you deserve to feel free to talk about them.”

          So let me make it clear.  You should feel free to expect some sympathy – certainly from your rabbi! – for legitimate gripes.  Therapy and a sympathetic ear are two different things!  Yes, it’s true that when people suffer from chronic issues, those who cope best are those who manage to function the best they can in the face of their suffering.  And my prayer is that each one of us, when we are hurting, can manage to draw from a deep well of strength and resolve to transcend our pain.  Whether it’s physical or emotional pain.  We should all understand and internalise that we go on to do great things and be a blessing to others when we put our pain aside and get over it.  But as human beings who are hurting, we deserve sympathy from those who purport to be our friends, our community.

          Even when we are trying to be sympathetic, we often stumble and manage to say words that hurt as much as heal.  Rabbi Harold Kushner tells of how, when he had a teenage son slowly dying from a rare disease, well-intentioned people would make him feel worse.  In his highly-acclaimed book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, he tells of some of the things these people would say to him, that were not at all helpful.

          “Everything is for the best,” they’d tell him.  How can my son’s suffering be for the best?  Kushner would wonder.

          “God will not test you more than you can bear,” they’d tell him.  I wish God would think me unable to bear testing, Kushner would think.  Then maybe He wouldn’t be willing for my son to be so afflicted. 

          Not that Rabbi Kushner resented these well-meaning individuals.  He only pointed out his reaction when told these things, to help us understand that they weren’t the things one should say in a similar situation.  And what does Kushner think you should say, in reaction to someone’s suffering of the nature of a sick, dying child?  “I’m sorry.”  That’s all. Then just be there for them.

          Shortly after I became a rabbi, I had a couple in their early sixties in my military congregation.  He was a retired Chief Master Sergeant, and she had started a late career as an administrator for a university extension program.  I knew that they had two sons.  What I didn’t know was that they’d had a third son, who died at a young age of a brain tumour.

          He explained this to me one day.  He had ‘happened’ into my office in the base hospital, ostensibly because he happened to be in the building for a medical appointment.  He sat down and began chatting about random things, and then all of a sudden he spilled the information about the son who had died.

          “I’m sorry,” I said.  We sat quietly for a few minutes then I stood up and patted his shoulder.  The moment passed, and we enjoyed a good relationship for the rest of the three years I was in that assignment.

No, there really are no words – except perhaps “I’m sorry” – that can ease the pain of one who has lost a child or seen their child suffer.  How much more so, if someone lost a child to suicide.  Suicide is something with which many of us are acquainted.  And why shouldn’t we be?  It is certainly not an unknown phenomenon in Australia.

Australia’s suicide rate in 2011 was 10.0 per 100,000 population.  Males are three times more likely than females to commit suicide; rates are 15.3 per 100,000 for men, and 4.8 for women.  For both sexes, the older the individual the more likely he or she is to commit suicide.

How do suicide rates for Australian Jews compare to those for the same gender and age groups among other Australians?  I couldn’t find statistics, probably in part because with such a small number of Jews in Australia, such rates cannot produce a data sample of a size large enough to be statistically reliable.  But among major religious groups in the USA, Jews are less likely to commit suicide than Protestants or Catholics.  Nobody knows why, but a good guess would be lower rates of alcoholism amongst Jews than other identifiable groups in society.

If Jews are unlikely to commit suicide that is small comfort – and perhaps even makes it worse – when someone you know commits suicide.  As we know, there is a longstanding religious taboo associated with suicide.  Strictly speaking, when someone commits suicide we are not supposed to mourn them in the same way that we mourn other close to them.  There is not supposed to be a funeral, and certainly not a eulogy.  The suicide cannot be buried in a regular Jewish cemetery.  They must be buried in a separate area, delineated by a fence.

In practice, these rules are rarely enforced.  Taking one’s own life is considered a major transgression, the equivalent of murder.  But most would agree that suicide is not a rational act.  It is, rather, the act of someone afflicted with mental illness.  Acts committed by the mentally ill are not considered to be transgressions.  The mentally ill cannot sin.  So in most cases, in most places, nobody denies the survivors of a suicide, the privilege of mourning and eulogy and ‘proper’ burial.  Still, I’m sure that if you look hard enough, you can find a Chevra Kaddisha that will not inter someone who died by suicide.

I’m thinking about this, because Clara and I know someone whose grown daughter committed suicide this week.  A vivacious and smart young woman who was finishing up her PhD.  A published author and a journalist.

When we hear of someone who has committed suicide, we have a tendency to want to rationalise as to why.  To pick apart the life now ended, and try to understand the tzurres that drove them to do such a thing.  To, perhaps lay blame…even upon the still-living.  But there’s no possible profit in that.

What should you say to someone whose child has committed suicide?  I’m sorry.  Why say more?  How can you make sense of such an act?  Of the hurt and guilt?  What enlightenment can you possibly bring to bear that would change the facts?  That would assuage the pain the family are feeling.  There’s nothing except I’m sorry that would be helpful in any way.  Not immediately afterwards.  Not ten years later.

Suicide is not very common among Jews.  Even so, most of us know someone who has grieved a suicide.  If it happens to someone you know, try to avoid judging.  That is, judging either the suicide, or those close to him.  Each one of us is imperfect.  We miss things in people who are close to us.  Signs and warnings of potential for undesirable acts, including suicide.  Most of us aren’t trained to recognise the signs.  Even if we are and we do see them, we have a tendency to hide in denial.  All the second-guessing in the world won’t bring the dead person back.  It will only increase the guilt of those left behind.

Be compassionate with those who have experienced loss.  Do not judge them; it will solve nothing.  Don’t say things that will hurt rather than help.

When someone has lost a child to an untimely death, there really isn’t anything to say.  Except “I’m sorry.”  Especially when the loss was due to suicide.  Suicide is not an everyday occurrence.  But when it strikes someone close to you, remember these principles.  Shabbat shalom.

Important Boundaries - a Drash for Parashat Ki Teitsei

I wonder if you’ve ever heard of the city of McAllen, Texas?  It’s a city of 133,000 souls.  It’s situated at the eastern end of the Rio Grande Valley.  It’s close to where the eponymous river debauches into the Gulf of Mexico.  The River is anything but grand as it passes to the south of McAllen.  But the Rio Grande, puny is it is, serves as a very significant boundary.  Cultural and economic differences between Mexico and the USA sharply differentiate many important facets of life north and south of the border.

McAllen has experienced economic boom times since 1994.  In that year a treaty known as NAFTA, short for North American Free Trade Agreement, went into effect.  It increased cross-border commerce significantly.  It did this by granting protection from import duty for goods manufactured in Mexico and sold in the USA.  This, primarily because labour costs in Mexico are significantly lower than in her neighbour to the north.

At the same time that cross-border commerce has boomed, casual border crossings by US citizens across the border to shop and dine has trickled into almost nothing.  This is because of the co-incident rise of narco-gangs on the Mexican side, which vie for turf and influence and create a violent side to everyday life.  Ordinary Mexicans have found their lives often in peril, and visitors from the USA often get caught in the crossfire.  For all you’ve heard about gun violence in the USA, you should know that Americans justifiably feel far safer north of the US-Mexican border.

Americans in cities along the Rio Grande such as McAllen consider the border to be an important and logical part of their everyday lives, and they thank God that they live on its north side.  The border represents the boundary between relative safety and prosperity on the north, and relative anarchy and poverty on the south.  It is a boundary that is important.  And, at least to residents of South Texas, it makes good sense.

Now I wonder if you’ve ever heard of the town of Point Roberts, Washington?  It is a small and quiet town of about 1,300 inhabitants.  It’s situated just south of Vancouver, British Columbia.  Being south of the 49^th parallel, it is in the United States in accordance with the Treaty of Paris of 1873.  But it is connected by land only to Canada.  To travel to anyplace in the USA other than by boat, residents must drive north across the border, around the shore of Boundary Bay, and then re-enter the USA at another crossing.  It’s no wonder that very few people live in Point Roberts.  If you look at its satellite image on Google Earth, you’ll see that the town of Tsawassen Beach, British Columbia, Point Roberts’ neighbour across the border to the north, is far more densely populated.  And that makes sense, since Tsawassen Beach residents are not cut off by the international border, from vital support services.

All that said, my guess is that the residents of Point Roberts, assuming it were possible, would not vote for secession from the USA to join with Canada.  Not that there is anything wrong with Canada…it’s a lovely country!  But for a number of reasons, most American citizens would not be interested in changing their citizenship to that of their northern neighbours.  Despite the border’s inconvenience for the residents of Point Roberts, Washington, it is a boundary that makes sense.

So in at least two American municipalities, an international border is a part of the residents’ everyday realities.  In one case, this boundary is useful and convenient.  In the other case, the boundary is useful, but not convenient.  But in both cases, the residents would likely not be interested in dis-establishing that boundary.

Generally, boundaries make sense even when they are inconvenient.  And I’m not talking just about physical boundaries here.  I’m talking about the way that we differentiate between things, the way that we classify them.  As we go through life, we tend to categorise all kinds of things according to various boundaries.  Those boundaries are sometimes of our own making, and sometimes they are imposed upon us.

An example of the former might be that we look for certain qualities when we are choosing friends.  We might not do it consciously.  But we do it.  I challenge you to make a mental list of all the people whom you consider friends…and not just acquaintances.  Now ask yourselves:  is there a common thread between all these people?  Chances are that most of them look alike in some way.  Chances are that they all look like you in some way!  And I mean that in the broadest sense possible:  not that they must physically look like you, but that they likely share some of your important life interests and aspects of your life situation.

The very idea of classifying people and things, or establishing and respecting boundaries, has gotten a bad rap in recent years.  There certainly are boundaries that seem, if not arbitrary, then tyrannous.  For example, the boundary of socio-economic class.  Sometimes wealthy people are criticised for tending to choose their friends, and their spouses, from among those in their own socio-economic class.  In other words, by limiting their voluntary social contacts to other wealthy people.  That’s a preference that most of us feel free to criticise.

But think about it.  Wealthy people have far more discretionary income than the rest of us.  To them, a good time might involve activities that are beyond my ability to pay for.  So if a wealthy person wants to be my friend and enjoy the activities he likes, he will probably be stuck paying my way as well.  If that’s his choice, and I’m willing to have a relationship that is not absolutely reciprocal, then that’s fine.  But why should we criticise a wealthy person if he, by and large, ends up choosing his friends from among others who are also wealthy.  If he doesn’t happen to have friends who are poor?  Because it is probably natural for him to choose other wealthy people for his friends.  Look, I’m not advocating that wealthy people stick together and avoid us lower class riff-raff!  I’m just saying that I have no right to criticise them if they do.

Now the problem with boundaries is when we use them to assume negative characteristics of someone because they’re on a particular side of a boundary.  For example, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with automatically classifying people by skin colour, height, hair texture or some other superficial measure.  But to ascribe to them some specific characteristic because of that superficial classification is not very fair.  Not to the person in question, and not to yourself either.  Let me explain.

If you assume that people with kinky hair, for example are not very bright, then you are likely to allow the genius of an Einstein escape you.  Einstein had kinky hair.  So if you avoided people with kinky hair because you think they’re not bright, you may be mid-judging a kinky haired person and also denying yourself to counsel of a very intelligent person.

Among the boundaries that are imposed from without, many originate in our religious traditions.  I’ve said before that the Torah is all about boundaries.  Between Israel and the nations.  Between sacred and profane, or ordinary.  Between male and female.  Between that which is allowed and sanctioned, and that which is prohibited.  The Torah, throughout its length, is constantly classifying things, drawing boundaries.

My premise is that we might feel as if we want to rebel against any particular boundary if it is in some way inconvenient for us.  But even so, if we’re honest, we can probably see where that boundary makes sense on some level.

Perhaps a good example of the latter is the taboo against out-marriage.  Many of us at some point in our lives have felt this was an unnecessary restraint.  And many of us have transgressed it.  It would have limited us in the potential partners, from whom we could choose.  It would have denied us the companionship of someone we desired or loved.  If at the time, someone suggested to us that the boundary made good sense and wasn’t intended to deny us happiness, we probably responded by taking offense.  But if we were honest with ourselves then – if we’re honest with ourselves now – we can see the wisdom of counselling Jews to search for their life partners among other Jews.  It is difficult enough for two individuals in this day and age to find enough common ground to forge an enduring partnership.  Isn’t it logical to make it easier by seeking out a partner with whom one shares as much as possible?  Of course, both parties to a marriage being Jews doesn’t guarantee the success of that marriage.  But it eliminates one thing that, for so many out-married Jews, ends up being a flashpoint of tension. 

This week’s Torah reading draws some boundaries for us.  For example, it tells us that men shouldn’t wear women’s clothing or vice versa.  Many of the senior women in this room have been told, at some time or another that for them to wear pants of any kind is tantamount to a transgression of this dictate.  But somehow, I don’t think that pants on women, or skirts on men were what the Torah had in mind.  Presumably, at the time of the wandering in the wilderness, both sexes wore clothing somewhat resembling the robes or coverings that Bedouin Arabs wear today.  Probably, neither men nor women would have worn pants as a habit.  So to read this verse as requiring women to wear dresses at all times, is probably disingenuous. 

The traditional commentators actually can’t agree on how to read this verse.  Some read it as prohibiting men and women from socialising together freely as it might encourage casual and forbidden sexual liaisons.  Some read it as prohibiting transvestism.  Others read it as prohibiting women from using ‘male’ religious articles such as tefillin and tallit.  I think that they’re all grasping for some element of truth but are all somewhat off base.

I think the point of this verse is that we should be forthright about who we are.  We should not use the way we present ourselves, including the way we look and dress, to misrepresent who and what we are.  It doesn’t mean that we should consider it prohibited to attend a drag queen show, for example.  When you go to a drag queen show, the point is that you know those good-looking women on stage are really men.  If you find that entertaining, then please do not consider it in any way a forbidden fruit.  Go, and enjoy.  I’m told that’s a very common form of entertainment in Thailand.  I’ve sat with people who have attended such shows who felt no constraint in telling me, a rabbi, in graphic detail about their experience.  Now I don’t find the idea of a drag queen show especially appealing.  And I can’t imagine spending my hard-earned money to attend one…in Thailand or elsewhere.  But it doesn’t bother me that others find it appealing.  I just, personally, don’t get it.  But I don’t get a lot of things!

If you take the broader view of this verse as I’ve suggested, then you can see a logic in it.  Even for encounters that are not especially sexual, the sex of the other has a way of colouring the encounter.  That’s why people often feel uncomfortable if they do not correctly identify the sex of the person they’ve encountered.  And why they may resent it if they feel the person has in any way mis-represented him or her-self.  We have been generally conditioned to see the setting of boundaries as, at the very least, an unnecessary evil.  But if we’re honest, we have a very basic need to know the sex of any given person we encounter, no matter how superficial that encounter.

So let’s not automatically condemn boundaries.  Or those who create or honour them.  Boundaries are an important tool.  Even when they’re inconvenient.  Even when they might seem tyrannous.  If they do, then perhaps it’s not the boundary itself but what we’re making it mean.  But just to recognise differences between people or things, and to classify them according to these differences, is not in and of itself bad.

Drash for Shoftim, Saturday Morning 10 August

Just to let you know, this morning's drash was unscripted; you can find the MP3 audio file here:  http://www.buzzsprout.com/15521

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Don

Pursue Justice, Justly

Many of us are aware of the concept of the Seven Noahide Laws.  This concept says that there are Seven Essential Laws incumbent upon all of humanity.  Each and every member of the human race is liable for these Seven Laws.  Any person who lives by them, is considered righteous in God’s eyes.  If a person lives by these Seven Laws, no matter what religion he practices – or if he doesn’t practice any religion – he is considered okay.  The Seven Laws are what we would call, ethical principles.  They transcend religious doctrinal differences.

          These Seven Laws are not stated explicitly in the Written Torah.  At least, not all of them.  Largely, they’re a Rabbinic construct.  Now that might call into question whether they are truly the Will of God.  But on the other hand, if they are a Rabbinic innovation, they speak very highly about the Rabbis in particular, and Judaism in general.  Because after all, in our day and age many individuals believe quite charitably that Divine Favour is not limited to adherents of a particular religion.  But 2,000 years ago, this was far from a given.  And even today, Judaism is the only religious system in which one finds such a blanket justification of humanity.  One finds it in certain strains of other religions.  But nowhere else is such a doctrine present in all denominational strains of another religion, from the most traditional to the most contemporary.  In Judaism, it is.

          There is a grassroots movement in various parts of the world to embrace the Seven Laws and create, in effect, a new religious expression out of them.  This is often called, the ‘Noahide Movement.’  Many members of this ‘movement’ were once Christians.  Mostly, they encountered Judaism and heard of this teaching.  They didn’t feel compelled to embrace Judaism in its fullness.  Even so, the idea of the Seven Laws resonated with them.  But one does not have to create a religion based on the Seven Laws, to embrace them.  One doesn’t even have to know ot the rabbinic writing that specifies them.  Because many would consider the Seven Laws to be tantamount to Natural Law, something that represents the human will at its best.  Something that transcends religious teaching.

          I’m not planning to turn this drash into a lecture on the Seven Laws, but I do want to point out one of them.  It stands out from the other six for two reasons.  First of all, it is the only one which is a positive precept.  That is, a thou shalt as opposed to a thou shalt not.  Secondly, and this will become completely obvious in just a moment, it is the only one which a person cannot carry out as an individual.  Oh, an individual can contribute to the upholding of this principle.  But to actually put it into effect, requires a society’s cooperation.  And the precept is this:  you must establish and maintain a system of justice, with a structure of fair laws and the means of enforcing them.

           Now, you may be tempted to smack yourselves in the middle of the forehead and think, that’s it; we’re sunk!   But before you do, consider this.  The world has never known a perfectly conceived, or perfectly functioning, system of justice.  So maybe, just maybe, the onus isn’t to achieve it, but to uphold it as a principle – and to continually work towards it.

          Tomorrow’s Torah reading opens with the following dictum in Deuteronomy 16:18-20:  Appoint yourselves judges and magistrates for your tribes in all your settlements that the Lord is giving you, and make sure that they administer honest judgement for the people.  Do not bend justice, and do not give special consideration.  Do not take bribes, since bribery makes the wise blind and perverts the words of the righteous.  Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and occupy the land that God is giving you.

Given the traditional notion that not one jot or tittle of the Torah is to be considered extraneous, how are we to understand the doubling of the word, ‘justice’?  Our Rabbis have suggested that it means we must pursue justice, justly.  That is, that we must not be pragmatic in our pursuit of justice.  We should never allow a miscarriage of pure justice in any given case, even when we believe that some greater good may be served by doing so.

What might be a good example of the latter?  If, for example, a guilty man were to be judged innocent – or the opposite – because of the belief that some societal benefit were to possibly come out of such a verdict.  IFF one is pursuing justice justly, then justice is justice and the first – and essential – element in justice is truth.

And what about the principle we refer to as ‘social justice’?  Many Jews would argue that we are liable to God for the way we order our society in order to bring about equality and to alleviate suffering.  This is what is often meant when we invoke the phrase, ‘social justice.’  Usually, when one uses the phrase it is not in the context of just laws and sanctions, but of some desired societal outcome.  Like redistribution of wealth.  Like providing extra opportunities for the poor, to advance out of poverty.  If that’s the sort of thing that ‘social justice’ means, it exists on an entirely different plane from justice, period.  The two are not necessarily in tension with one another.

But what if the two were in tension with one another?  That is to say, what if a certain action was thought to be expedient to the goals of ‘social justice’ yet would result in a miscarriage of justice, period?

I’m not going to mention any particular case right now, but if you follow the news and my speaking and writing then I’m sure you could think of an example of one from recent events.  But whatever example you might wish to use, I would say that justice, period trumps ‘social justice.’  And what would be the basis of my saying so?

In an earlier Torah reading, in the book of Leviticus 19:15, we read the following:  Do not pervert justice.  Do not give special consideration to the poor or show [extra] respect to the powerful.  Judge your people fairly.

In other words, the Torah seems to anticipate two oppositional tendencies.  One is to bend over backwards to give a break to the downtrodden.  The other is to do the same for the powerful.  But in reality, both tendencies are one and the same.  Both represent the attempt to use the system of just laws in the service of something else, even if it is a desirable end.  But the bottom line, Judge your people fairly, requires that justice is pure.  That justice is administered without any special considerations.  Except for the facts of the case, as best as can be ascertained through the apparatus of the law.

Let’s pursue social justice.  Let’s work in various ways to make our society a more fair one.  One in which we work to ameliorate disadvantages that stymie the success of certain people, through no fault of their own.  But let’s never consider making justice, period, a hostage to the quest for social justice.

In other words, truth is truth and truth is supreme.  It might seem to serve a greater good to adjudicate someone guilty despite there not being enough evidence to do so.  If so, no greater good can be served by perverting pure justice.  Guilt is guilt, and innocence is innocence.  Even when the truth does not serve some specific narrative of what is fair and what is not.  And the thrust of our Tradition, leaning on the reading of this verse in our weekly Torah reading, is trying to tell us this.  May we always pursue justice, justly.  Shabbat shalom. 

Drash for Saturday Morning, Parashat Re'eh

US Air Force Academy Chapel

Tear Down Their Altars?

When I was the Jewish chaplain at the US Air Force Academy, I conducted services in the iconic chapel building.  Chances are, if you saw an image of this building you’d recognise it.  It’s a very famous building, an example of modern, soaring, religious architecture.  Inside the building there are three permanent single-use sanctuaries.  Upstairs, in the vaulted space is the Protestant chapel.  Downstairs, of somewhat more modest dimensions are the Catholic and Jewish chapels.  There are several additional rooms that sometimes serve as an Eastern Orthodox chapel, a Muslim prayer space, and a Buddhist meditation space.  All this under one roof!

          The chapel building is a major tourist attraction.  Visitors to Colorado Springs usually tour the Air Force Academy, and most take the tour of the chapel.  Sometimes, while I was stationed there I felt more like a museum curator than a rabbi.  Although there was a staff of dedicated tour guides, I would often find a group coming through when I was in the chapel to set the Torah or change books, or play with the sound system.

Baha'i Temple, Haifa

          On a few occasions, Jews who were part of these groups would introduce themselves and chat me up while they had me cornered.  Often they would ask:  Don’t you feel like a Second-class Citizen, being given the smallest of the three chapels and downstairs?  And I would always respond, honestly, that virtually all my Protestant colleagues were jealous of my lovely little chapel on the ground floor, underneath their soaring cathedral with its draughty heights and poor acoustics.

          So people would come from all over the world and visit our chapel.  But there was one resident of Colorado Springs who would not set foot in the building.  And that was our local Chabad rabbi.  He would occasionally come up to the Academy to do a program.  And when he did, the price of his attendance would be my holding the program in the Cadet Chapel Lounge which was in a dormitory building.  He would not enter the chapel at all.

          One time he explained:  it was because of what we have just read this morning, Deuteronomy chapter 12, verses two and three.

          Do away with all the places where the nations whom you are driving out, worship their gods, [whether they are] on the high mountains, on the hills, or under any luxuriant tree.  You must tear down their altars, break up their sacred pillars, burn their Asherah trees, and chop down the statues of their gods, obliterating their names from that place.

          Clearly this specific instruction does not apply in the diaspora.  The instruction is specifically given for the people Israel as they are preparing to enter the Land of Israel and seize it from the Canaanites.  But my colleague understood its import to him, to be that at least he should not enter a place where idolaters worship their gods.

          But there is dispute among Jews, as to whether our neighbours’ worship represents idolatry.  Many Jewish authorities, at the very least, do not think that Christianity and Islam constitute idol-worship.  Even the Rambam harboured some ambiguity on the subject.  He did not want to dismiss all Christians and Muslims as idol-worshippers.  But he did not want to endorse their religions.  This especially, because he was fighting a breakaway religion coming out of Judaism, the breakaway known as Karaism.  It would have been difficult for the Rambam to condemn the Karaites, who had gained many followers from among the Jews, whilst proclaiming Christianity and Islam to be valid.  So the Rambam was not entirely clear.  But later authorities were clearer.  And today, many Jewish authorities do not consider Christianity and Islam to be idol-worship.  And that’s not just political correctness or politeness.  Rather, it’s a recognition that adherents of these two religious systems, in their various iterations, often recognise and assimilate the essential wisdom in the Torah.  Oh, they don’t teach the keeping of the Sabbath, for example.  But Jewish authorities have never considered such ‘ritual’ mitzvot as the Sabbath to be incumbent upon non-Jews.  In fact, some Orthodox rabbis today will tell non-Jews that they are forbidden to keep the Sabbath.  Even if they’re on a path to convert to Judaism but haven’t yet.

Done of the Rock over the Western Wall, Jerusalem

          So it’s not a mitzvah in this day and age, to tear down the altars of other religions.  Not even in the Land of Israel.  Which is a good thing, because the modern state of Israel is a religiously pluralistic state where anybody is free to worship according to their own beliefs.  The country is full of mosques and churches.  The Baha’i temple in Haifa is as recognisable as is the Dome of the Rock.  So it is not necessary to think the gentiles’ religious buildings unworthy of standing:  not in Israel, and not in the Diaspora.

          But what about visiting the gentiles’ religious buildings?  Just to see them or, God forbid, to attend a service there?  Many Jews feel reluctant to set foot in the holy places of other religions.  Does this passage of Torah, or any other passage, inform us that we should not enter others’ religious shrines?

          Obviously, my Chabad colleague in Colorado Springs thought so.  But I don’t agree.  I have been invited to attend many a non-Jewish service, and I have even occasionally spoken from a Christian pulpit as a guest ‘preacher.’  Some of you have been in churches or mosques.  Either while on tour, to see important landmarks.  Or to attend weddings.  Or even just because you’d been invited to a service and were curious.

          Most Jews wouldn’t go as far as the last.  We’re happy to have guests in our shule of other religions, as we have at many services here.  But we don’t feel comfortable going into someone else’s worship space.  There is too much baggage – too much history forced or coerced conversion of Jews.  We even find their symbols distasteful.  To our Christian neighbours, the Cross is a symbol of life and redemption.  But when Jews see a cross, we’re more likely to see it as a symbol of death.  As a symbol under which Christian armies and mobs attacked and killed Jews.

          If you don’t feel comfortable attending a Christian, or other, service, then I’m not here to criticise you.  But I’m also not here to criticise you if you do feel comfortable, and attend someone else’s service either because you were invited or simply go anonymously, out of curiosity.  My experience tells me that you won’t end up ‘infected.’  And you won’t likely be so impressed that you’ll defect from Judaism.  I’ve attended many services of other religions, and I’m still a Jew.  And this, despite that I often felt there was something good, something memorable to take away from the others’ service.

          Our ancient forebears, as they entered the land of the Canaanites, were likely to be attracted to the colourful ritual of the Canaanite temples.  Look, there’s something to be said for vestal virgins…especially in contrast to the austere worship of the unseen God.  For former is fun and exciting.  The latter is demanding.  But today, since our neighbours have given up vestal virgins, we’re not likely to be too strongly attracted to their religions!

          Seriously.  Do not read verses such as today’s reading and think that we must tear down our neighbours’ altars.  Or that, at a minimum, we must distance ourselves from our neighbours and their religious practices.  We shouldn’t imitate them.  Rather, we should see the beauty and deep spirituality in our own.  But we should not fear our neighbours’ practices.  And we should not think of them as idolaters.  At least not automatically.  To be sure, some gentiles are idolaters.  As are some Jews.  But all of our traditions have something of wisdom to share with their followers.  And each of us can see beauty in the practices of our neighbours.  Even when we don’t agree with them.  Or feel inclined to adopt them as our own.  Shabbat shalom.