Who Must Marry Whom: A Reflection on Parashat Ki Tetzei, Saturday 29 August 2015

Back at the beginning of the winter, peoples’ profile pictures on Facebook began showing up with a horizontal rainbow of coloured stripes superimposed over the picture.  The first time I saw it, I did a double take, but a moment later I realized the point.  It was a celebration of the US Supreme Court’s decision, announced on 26 June of this year.  Things that happen in the USA have a way of reverberating across the world, reflecting the country’s size and overall wealth.  Not to mention the power of her entertainment industry.  That’s why the rainbow wash instantly began appearing over the profile pictures of people who had no obvious connection to the USA.  Because the quest for Marriage Equality, as it’s called, has been front-and-centre for a number of years in the USA, it has become a top hot-button issue in the rest of the Western World including here.  The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges serves as an inspiration in other countries.  Including here in Australia where the number of rallies supporting Marriage Equality has increased.  The ruling coalition has been under a lot of pressure to pass a law changing the definition of marriage to include individuals of the same sex.  Prime Minister Abbott has decided to put it to the electorate in a plebiscite in the near future.

          The debate on the subject has been interesting, to say the least.  The question is framed as the Right to Marry the One Whom One Loves.  The premise is that gay and lesbian people are born that way.  This may well be so, although proof still eludes us.  But since Everybody Knows it’s so, then limiting marriage to two people of opposite sexes, in effect creates an inequality – making whole classes of people unable to marry.  So, out of a sense of fairness, there has been a groundswell of straight people, advocating for the rights of homosexual people to marry.  And celebrating the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision.

          The decision’s detractors often appear quite stodgy.  Since we’re talking about an equality issue, how can someone not want equality for all?  It is often pointed out that there are plenty of other legal limitations as to who one can marry.  For example, one cannot marry one’s sibling.  Or one’s parent.  Or more than one.  A valid argument against the redefining of marriage to include two people of the same sex, often cautions that the action will ultimately lead to the aforementioned becoming legal.  Those who have been advocating for same-sex marriage tend to dismiss this argument.  But I think it’s valid.  If the basis of the right of two people of the same sex to marry is that the state cannot tell someone who they can’t love, then that opens the door to all kinds of changes.  People love their animals.  Why limit marriage to another homo sapiens?

          The marriage argument in our time, focuses on the right to marry, and asserts that an individual has the right to choose one’s marriage partner.  But the Torah, in this week’s reading, frames the question differently.  It tells us whom one must marry.  Three examples are given, each of which is very problematic to contemporary ears because they are very far outside our sensibilities.  But even if the cases of required marriage are no longer operative, from them we can learn important lessons regarding Hashem’s Mercy and Concern for our well-being.

          Our reading, Parashat Ki Tetzei, opens with the case of the women who is a captive in war.  We know that rampaging armies often rape their way across enemy country.  From the Torah we learn that this was a reality even in the ancient world.  What causes it?  Probably a combination of factors.  But it is clearly odious.  And the antidote?  If an Israelite soldier wishes to ‘have his way’ with a captive girl, then he must marry her.  The man’s responsibilities toward the enemy woman are the same as if she were of his own people.  If he ultimately decides that he doesn’t want to remain married, he can divorce her under the same conditions that a man may divorce any wife.  He cannot sell her as a slave but must free her.

          It’s easy to dismiss this whole scenario and ask why the Torah doesn’t simply forbid the Israelite soldier from touching an enemy woman.  I can’t answer the question.  But I can see how, if the victorious soldier faces the requirement of taking a captive enemy woman as a wife in every respect, this would serve as a strong constraint to his drive to possess such a woman.  And it would serve as a strong protection for the woman thus taken in marriage.

          The second case involves the Israelite woman taken by force.  There are certain tests of the credibility of the woman’s claim that she was unwilling.  If by these tests the woman was ‘shown’ to have contributed to the act through her behavior, then the man must marry her.  And then, he can never divorce her.

          This, too is easy to dismiss because it goes against so many principles that are seldom disputed today.  For example, that of ‘blaming the victim.’  And it would seem that the removal of the option of divorce down the line, is imposing a liability on the woman, not the man.  So if a woman gets raped by a man after inadvertently wandering into his field, she’s then sentenced to be married to him for life?  And of course, this sounds harsh and sexist as it should, to our ears.

          But look at it another way.  If a man takes a woman under circumstances where there is some sense that she walked into it with eyes open, but under circumstances which defied social conventions, then his responsibility to the woman is for life.  There’s no out for him.  In this way, we can see this law, not as a liability placed against a woman, but as a protection for her.

          The third case.  If a man dies before his wife could have a child, the man’s brother is obligated to marry the widow to produce a child in his dead brother’s name.  If he does not want to perform this duty, he must perform a ritual calculated to show the entire community that he is a slacker.  It is easy to dismiss this law as well.  But it is important to see this a protection for the women – not an onus.  In order to see this, we must take the Torah in the context of its time.

          My point in highlighting these three practices is not to advocate that we return to them.  I don’t hear anybody, not the most traditional, advocating for the forced marriage of war captives, rape victims, or childless widows.  I only wish to point to Hashem’s meta-message that marriage, and who should marry whom, is a matter of responsibility…as well as choice.  There are those whom one is allowed to marry, and that list appears elsewhere, in Parashat Acharei Mot, in the 18^th chapter of Leviticus.  And then there are those whom one is compelled to marry, based on circumstance or, sometimes based on one’s behaviour.

          In our age, we tend to see marriage as a right but not a responsibility.  Gay and lesbian people should not be denied the right to marry based on their sexual orientation.  By asserting their right to marry, they avail themselves of certain legal advantages that the state grants couples in order to encourage marriage.  But why should the state have anything at all to do with marriage?  Because marriage adds to the stability of families.  It protects women and, especially, children.  That the state recognises the status of a bona fide or, as it is called in the USA, a common law husband or wife, tells of this.  Marriage between a man and a woman who create a home and have children is valid, even without a licence to prove it.  The state uses the issuing of marriage licences, and the recognition of responsibilities even in the absence of a licence, as a tool for creating domestic security.

          For the record, I’m not an advocate of same-sex marriage.  But that’s not because I don’t want homosexual people to be able to enjoy a life in the company of the one they’ve chosen to love.  It’s because a marriage licence is not intended to be an expression of love.  Rather, it’s an instrument of responsibility.  Why should the state care who loves whom?  It doesn’t.  But the state does have a responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in society.  And the whole debate over same-sex marriage has, unfortunately, turned us away from that principle.  The Torah propounds this principle.  Today we tend to ignore it.  Shabbat shalom.

G-d’s Lost and Found: A Reflection for Parashat Ki Tetzei, Friday 28 August 2015

Everybody’s heard of the institution called a Lost and Found.  Wherever you might be, there is usually a designated place where you should go if you find some item that someone has lost.  Perhaps carelessly dropped in a public place.  A shopping mall, an airport, a workplace, whatever.  If it’s an item of particular value, the loss of which could especially harm the loser, one sometimes turns it in to the police.  For example, someone’s wallet, with important identification and credit cards, that sort of thing.  The important principle is that you want to turn it over to a place where the one who lost it will most likely be reunited with it.

          Likewise, if you suddenly notice something missing from your person, you first retrace your most recent steps.  And then, you find the local Lost and Found.  And failing that, you check with the police.  Because, whilst there obviously are malefactors among us, people who would steal outright or simply not turn in something of value that they found, that does not describe most people.  Most folks are reasonably good people.  If they found someone’s wallet on the floor of, say, a shopping mall, they would take reasonable steps to make it possible for the wallet’s owner to reclaim it.

          Almost everybody has had such an experience.  Either of losing an item and being re-united with it thanks to someone’s kindness.  Or of finding an item and going out of their way to find its owner.  Many of us have been on both sides of such transactions.

          When we are on the giving or receiving end of such actions, we tend to think of it as an act of kindness.  If we have been re-united with our lost possession, we want to shower the finder with expressions of gratitude.  If we’re on the other side of the transaction, we see the other’s expression of gratitude as sufficient payment for our act.  But underlying the entire business is the sense that goodness requires a person finding an object to take reasonable steps to find its owner.  And we find that principle reflected in this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tetzei.  And the Divine sense of Lost and Found goes far beyond what most of us would consider to be reasonable measures to restore our neighbour’s goods to him.

          As the 22^nd chapter of Deuteronomy opens, we find the dictum that we will restore our neighbour’s goods to him.  But if he is away or can’t be found, we are to take his item into our own home and hold it until her returns or can be found.  So far, so good.  But that extends to the case where he has lost his livestock or one of his working animals.  So you see your neighbour’s bovine, or sheep, or goat, or donkey out wandering around freely, and you know he is away.  If so, you are obliged to take it in, with your own livestock and care for it until your neighbor returns.  Implied is that you must feed and groom it, assist with the birth of its young and call a veterinarian in if needed.  That’s why the Torah specifically tells us that, in such a circumstance, it is forbidden to ‘hide yourself from them.’  It would be all-too-human to pretend that one didn’t see the wandering animal.  Let someone else take it in!  But we’re forbidden to do that.

          Just as an aside, do you think that requires that we take in one’s lost dog or other pet?  No, I don’t think so.  It would definitely be a Good Deed to do so, and our neighbour is likely to shower us with gratitude in such a case.  But I wouldn’t include a household pet in this case.  It isn’t the same as an income-producing animal.  And please don’t accuse me of not being an animal lover!  I love animals as much as the next person…in the next person’s house!

          But the law goes even farther.  If one see’s one’s neighbour’s donkey or ox falling on the road, one is required to take positive steps to save the animal and restore it to one’s neighbour.  So even to the point of taking what we might consider extraordinary steps to restore one’s neighbour’s property…it is an obligation.  Surely these laws assumed that there was no such thing as insurance that could be purchased to cover one’s animals.  Or a Centrelink office (social welfare agency for those not in Australia) to turn to if you lost your means of economic survival.  The Torah’s remedy for such social ills is not the creation of an agency to anonymously hand out public monies.  Rather, it is the concept that I AM my Brother’s Keeper.

          My point is not to cast aspersions on the safety net provided by the Welfare State, and suggest that we go back to the organisation of society prescribed in the Torah.  But sometimes the existence of the Welfare State clouds the reality of our personal responsibility to act positively to help our neighbour.  And perhaps an additional criticism of the Welfare State – its programmes often seem structured to enable people to develop dependence and feed it.  Not to get people on their feet and help them return to productivity.

          That – to assist our neighbour to return to productivity – is the point of these, the Torah’s laws of Lost and Found.  Even if it was our neighbour’s carelessness that resulted in him losing a valued object.  Or which resulted in his livestock wandering loose around town.  It is still our obligation to help him.  The principle being, a person’s livelihood is their dignity…and their survival.  When we keep that in mind, then it becomes more than just an act of kindness to restore our neighbour to his possessions.  We can begin to understand Hashem’s prescription that we go even beyond what the most generous might be willing to go.  Shabbat shalom.  

Letter Announcing High Holy Days Schedule and Intent

27 August 2015

Dear Friends,

The High Holy Days are fast approaching.  But this isn’t just any High Holy Days.  Rosh Hashanah always marks the beginning of the next year from the world’s creation, whose anniversary we consider to be on Rosh Hashanah.  But this Rosh Hashanah concludes the Shemitah year and marks the commencement of not just a New Year but the Jubilee Year.  For most of us, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity; we invite you to join us to observe this momentous period of celebration. 

Every fiftieth year is the Yuvel, the Jubilee, when the Written Torah demands of us that all servants be manumitted, debts forgiven, and all property revert back to its original owner.  Much of this is not applicable in our day as reflecting the disappearance of tribal lines and indentured servitude, and borrowing practice (the Prosbul) that circumvents the remission of debts.  But one aspect of the Jubilee is still applicable:  Each one will return to his heritage and to his family. (Leviticus 25:10) The first ten days of every year – the days that begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur, known as the Ten Days of Repentance – are to be dedicated to returning to one’s heritage and family.  In the Jubilee Year, the entire year is so dedicated.

And many in the Jewish world believe most sincerely that this isn’t any Jubilee.  Counting the years of our calendar and observing the world around us, there is a growing sense that Hevlei Mashiach – the dawning of the time of our Redemption – is upon us.  This adds further to the urgency of using our time wisely to prepare our hearts for whatever the future holds in store.

Torah is often referred to as a precious heritage and indeed it is.  Torah informs us about virtually every aspect of life:  from civil law and relations between a man and his neighbor, as well as relations within the family.  In the Torah’s worldview, it all hinges on family. The family is the basic unit for creating a life in the Image of G-d.  This does not exclude those whose families represent a mix of traditions; G-d created all of humanity in His Image, and we are therefore all responsible for living in the Image of G-d.

Sadly, today the family with an internal dynamic that is healthy and constructive is more the exception than the rule.  Equally sadly, relations in our hyper-extended family – Am Yisrael, the People Israel – mirrors this dysfunction.  Each one of us can tell our own story about how this dysfunction has hurt him or her directly.

I challenge each and every one of you, therefore, to make the repair of our relations – within the nuclear family, the extended family, and the hyper-extended family that is the People Israel – the focus of your energies in the year that will begin with the sunset on Sunday, 13 September.  Attend services for Rosh Hashanah – there are a number of alternative possibilities in our area – and hear the jarring notes of the Shofar.  And let those jarring sounds, envelope you in disquiet – so that you will see the imperative of reclaiming our heritage and our family and drawing closer to G-d.  Experience anew the rituals, but more importantly let those rituals carry you into a sense of kavvanah, of intentional action – that will make you an active force for healing and reconciliation in all your circles of relationship in the coming year.

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Synagogues and other religious organisations in our community have already promulgated – or will shortly promulgate – their High Holy Day programmes.  Jewish Journeys is an educational outreach organization welcoming all Jews and those who seek a closer relationship with G-d through Judaism.  We extend our warm invitation to you for the following available options of your choice.

ROSH HASHANAH

First Evening              Sunday 13 September, 6.00PM                      Rosh Hashanah Seder:  full kosher

dinner and blessings for the New              Year in the Sephardic/Mizrachi                 tradition. 

                                                                                                            $40 per person suggested donation

First Day                     Monday, 14 September, 10.00AM                 Torah and Shofar Service.

$15 per person suggested                           donation.

YOM KIPPUR

Evening                       Tuesday, 22 September, 7.00PM                   Kol Nidrei Service. 

$15 per person suggested                           donation.

Afternoon                    Wednesday, 23 September, 2.00PM              Afternoon/Memorial/Closing                                                                                                                     Services.

                                                                                                            $15 per person suggested                                                                                                                           donation.

All the above will take place at the Queensland Country Women’s Association Hall, at the corner of Garden Street and Young Street, Southport.  There are limited free car parks available in front of the building.  Additional car parks are available at the Council lot one block west, or in the Australia Fair garage.  At the conclusion of the Yom Kippur afternoon sequence, there will be a kosher break-the-fast at the Levy home, in Southport about ten minutes from the QCWA Hall.  Directions will be available at the service.  $18 per person suggested donation.  Bookings are essential only for the Rosh Hashanah Seder and the Break-the-fast, to assist us in planning for the quantities of food.  For all other services, you are welcome to simply drop in.  For bookings or additional information, please contact Rabbi Levy at rabbidon@jewishjourneys.com.au or 0448 691 994.

With only best wishes for yontef renewal and inspiration, I am…

Yours truly,

Rabbi Don Levy

Pursuing Justice, Justly: A Reflection for Parashat Shof’tim, Saturday 22 August 2015

Shaun King

Rachel Dolezal, today and in high school

Everybody’s heard of the Black Lives Matter movement.  It came into being sometime after the case of Trayvon Martin.  Martin was the black teenager who was killed by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, in a violent confrontation in Sanford, Florida.  Black Lives Matter found its voice after a number of violent encounters between police and African-Americans in various places in the USA. 

It is certainly a noble principle to remind the public that there is value in the lives of each and every human being.  But when some state that ‘black lives matter’ is an inferior slogan to ‘all lives matter,’ they get shouted down and called ‘racist.’ 

Many members of society, whatever their personal racial makeup, experience the pain of exclusion and marginality.  Maybe it is time to explore the nature of society which determines who’s in and who’s out.  And strategise to assist those who are ‘out’ for whatever reason, and to help them find their way in.  But would-be revolutionaries whose influence is based on grievance, find that notion dismiss-able at least.  Because it contextualizes their particular grievance into a greater quest for opportunity and advantage.  And marginalizes those who seek to profit from their own particular grievance.  And that's why we have the Shaun King’s and Rachel Dolezal’s of the world.

          Shaun King, a blogger on the Daily Cos, is one of the founders and principal spokesmen for Black Lives Matter.  It turns out he isn’t black at all.  Not even half-black, like President Obama.  Both his parents were white.  Does that make him unqualified to lead a movement that advocates for the rights of black people?  No, of course not.  But in this day and age, no black people would accept him as a leader if he were not black.  So when he claims to have been bullied in school for being biracial, he is not telling the truth.  He may very well have been bullied, ffor any number of reasons.  Maybe he should have become a crusader against bullying.  But for whatever reason, he built himself a fictitious identity around his supposedly being biracial.  Why?

          Perhaps this might shed some light:  he attended Morehouse College, an historically-black college on a free ride.  A scholarship paid for by Oprah Winfrey which is only available to black males.  It would at least seem that he created an identity for financial gain.  I don’t believe that there are any scholarships specifically for victims of childhood bullying.  If there were, half the students alive – perhaps more – would be eligible!

          Then there’s Rachel Dolezal.  She’s another person without a drop of black blood in her veins, who has created for herself a persona of a biracial person.  Using that legend, she built two careers.  The first as an instructor of African-American Studies at Eastern Washington University.  The second, as a professional activist, serving in various salaried positions culminating in her election as president of her local branch of the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  Does being white, disqualify Rachel Dolezal from advocating for black people?  Again, of course not.  But today, as a white person she would never build a career on such advocacy.  Dolezal, after finishing high school moved far from home, to Mississippi where she created her legend of being part-black.  She parlayed that into a free ride at Howard University, another historically-black school, where she took her MA.

          There is justice, from the Hebrew word tzedek.  It has a number of synonyms, among them:  fair play, equity, neutrality, objectivity.  Our Torah reading this week, Parashat Shof’tim, opens with a plea for justice.  You shall not pervert judgement, you shall not respect someone’s presence, and you shall not accept a bribe. (…) Justice, justice shall you pursue, so that you shall live and possess the land that Hashem your G-d, gives you.

          Then there is social justice.  The dictionary definition of social justice is:  Justice in terms of distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.  But it has come to mean something more like social engineering for the purpose of righting historic injustices.  Like many concepts, it sounds noble.  Like many concepts that sound noble in theory but aren’t so much so in practice, the drive for social injustice itself, unfortunately leads to injustice.  And it also gives us characters like Shaun King and Rachel Dolezal.

          Both individuals have histories of deception and dishonesty, aside from their false racial identities.  Dishonesty is dishonesty, whatever the purpose of the deception.

          But an important point is:  why would someone engage in deception in order to be seen as a member of a supposedly-oppressed minority?  And the answer to that is the result of the drive for social justice.  No matter how well-intentioned, any offering of advantage to specific targeted populations is sure to create new inequalities.  And draw out those who will use them to their own advantage.  Even through dishonesty.

          That’s one of the explanations why our Torah reading repeats the word tzedek.  The statement reads:  tzedek, tzedek, tirdof.  Justice, justice, shall you pursue.  If there’s not one extraneous pen stroke in the Torah, as the traditionalist avers, then why the doubled word?  Some commentators take it to mean that we must pursue justice, justly.  Creation of new injustices – new advantages to the historically oppressed – are not justified.  Good intentions do not justify injustice.

          A number of black and other minority thinkers have pointed out the danger in lowered standards and set-asides, even when intended to set historical wrongs right.  They point out that every black student on a university campus must work doubly hard to prove himself, because he is under the suspicion of being handed his seat at university in the interests of affirmative action.  Therefore, black students are less likely to be challenged or taken seriously by their professors or their peers.  And what this creates is a form of racism…in the interest of eradicating Racism.

          If Racism is a persistent problem – and many agree that it is – then it makes no sense to employ means shown to create and perpetuate racism in the drive to eradicate it.  The use of unjust means in the service of justice is often attractive.  That’s why, many would argue, the caution was stated in the Torah.  If the ancient Israelites did not have a tendency to engage in specific behaviors, the argument goes, Hashem would not have needed to use the Torah to forbid them.  Any act that is expressly forbidden in the Torah can be assumed to have had at least some attraction for the people Israel.

          Understanding this tendency, we can understand the tendency in our own age to do the same.  And we can understand the timelessness of the lesson.  And heed it.  Or not.  Shabbat shalom.

The Sky Isn’t Falling! A Reflection for Parashat Shof’tim, Friday 21 August 2015

In 1971 Patrick Moore was a PhD candidate in ecology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.  He and a number of students committed to peace and the preservation of the earth, meeting in the basement of a Church, formed the organisation Greenpeace which ultimately became a global powerhouse.

          Everybody’s heard of Greenpeace.  The very name makes you feel good.  As did the causes in which they involved themselves with such drama and courage.  They chartered a ship and set sail for Alaska to prevent the US government from conducting a test of the hydrogen bomb.  They did not prevent that test, but shortly thereafter the Americans announced that they would cease all hydrogen bomb testing.  So Greenpeace declared victory and set out in search of another cause. 

They found it in protecting the whales.  Whales were endangered, yet Japan and the Soviet Union insisted on hunting them.  Greenpeace took to placing themselves between the whalers and the whales.  The image of these brave young people, daring the Japanese and Soviet whalers to shoot them with their harpoons, was compelling.  I don’t know about you, but I remember quickly agreeing to donate to the group when their fund-raisers phoned me.  Thanks to millions of such responses to their fundraising calls, Greenpeace grew into powerful organisation.

Environmental issues have always resonated with me, perhaps because of when I came of age.  I was too young for Vietnam.  The civil rights war was won, the sexual revolution concluded.  So the environment became my cohort’s defining issue.  Earth Day had first been celebrated in 1970, and now we had an organisation – Greenpeace – to rally around as the saviour of our planet.

Environmentalism was just so good, so right, so…Jewish.  Reviving a Kabbalistic tradition, we began conducting Tu B’Shvat Seders.  Generations of Jews had planted trees in Israel as an expression of Jewish solidarity.  Now we embraced trees and nature as a way of expressing concern for the earth.  The New Year of the Trees, Tu B’Shvat, turned into a Jewish Earth Day.  On Pesach, we recite the Ten Plagues that Hashem inflicted upon Pharaoh for his obstinacy in not Letting His People Go.  On Tu B’Shvat, we recite the ten plagues that we inflict on the earth because of our poor stewardship.  Litter, Waste, Non-biodegradables, Deforestation, Destruction of Habitat, Chemical Spills and Runoff, Farming Methods that do not Preserve the Soil’s Integrity, Nuclear Waste, and War.

We study the laws of Bal Tashchit, meaning Do Not Destroy.  They are based on a verse in this week’s Torah reading, in Parashat Shof’tim, in the 20^th chapter of Deuteronomy:  When you besiege a city for many days to wage war against it to seize it, do not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them, for from it you will eat, and you shall not cut it down.  Is the tree of the field a man that is should enter the siege before you?  Only a tree that you know is not a food tree, it you may destroy and cut down, and build a bulwark against the city that makes war with you, until it is conquered.

This passage is talking about something specific and of limited application.  But one of Rabbi Ishmael’s 13 Rules of Torah Hermeneutics is Prat u’Klal – that is, from a specific case we can construct a general principle.  The verse is only prohibiting one from cutting down fruit trees coincident to a siege.  But from it, we derive a series of laws against wanton waste of natural resources.

So environmental issues have long resonated with me.  I’ve tried to incorporate a mindset of not wasting into my daily life…and imposed it on my family!  There’s always someone in the house who goes on crusades about turning off unused lights and unwatched TV’s.  Well, I was That Guy.  Even when we lived for years in military housing where we paid no utility bills.  I would go around the house, turning things off as a matter of principle.

So, when people really started talking seriously about Global Warming, I took notice.  It was after Al Gore lost the election for US President to George W Bush.  In his search for meaning in life, Gore lit upon the Global Warming issue and embraced it fully.  His documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth, was a global blockbuster.  An Inconvenient Truth, and the mindset that it helped popularise, changed the way that many people think about the earth.  But there’s only one problem.  The real Inconvenient Truth is that the planet is not in a warming trend now.  And even if it were, the planet has experienced cycles of warming and cooling.  They weren’t caused by mankind.  And the planet survived.

Over the years since Gore told us that we were driving our planet into oblivion, more than a few scientists chimed in tot the cause.  But a growing number – including prominent voices in climatology – have refuted it.  They’ve countered that the ‘science’ represents as much commentary as fact.

And that’s the problem with the concern for the environment today.  It has become such a Feel-good pseudoscience that the lay person – that’s you and me – has a hard time separating fact from fiction.

That’s why Patrick Moore left Greenpeace.  Over time, he was the only director with an academic background in the hard sciences.  Yet the organisation’s board was taking stands that made no scientific sense.  Like the banning of DDT.  Yes, chemicals do affect the environment.  But DDT helped to control malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and kept millions of children in Africa alive.  Like the banning of genetically-modified foods.  Golden Rice – rice fortified with beta carotene – can also save the lives of millions of the world’s poorest children per year.  Yet Greenpeace, and other guardians of the planet such as HRH Prince Charles, tell us that all GMO food is evil.  The environmentalist community today sees humanity as the enemy of the earth.  You hear this message pounded every time you watch a naturalist documentary on TV, or visit a zoo or aquarium.

The Torah’s message is quite different.  Way back in the first chapter of Genesis, in verse 28 after Hashem created man and woman, he decreed:  Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea, the bird of the sky, and every living thing that moves on the earth.  It is one thing to look at our stewardship of the earth and declare that we could do better.  Take any human endeavour and it is possible to say that we could do it better.  It is another thing entirely to declare that man is evil and the enemy of the earth.

That’s why I’m not an environmentalist today.  Like scientists such as Patrick Moore, I’m tired of wealthy ‘intellectuals’ dictating to the masses how they should live.  I’m tired of hearing the likes of Prince Charles taking nourishment out of the mouths of the world’s poorest.  I’m tired of leading scientists arriving at a conference to sign a declaration on global warming in private jets.  I’m tired of Al Gore’s inconvenient truths and demands that we radically change the way that we live, whilst he lives in a mansion that consumes more energy in a month than many of the world’s poorest will over a lifetime.

Bal Tashchit, the Torah’s laws of avoiding waste, do not counsel us to run around screaming the sky is falling…er, I mean, the sea is rising!  These laws, and the principle behind them, do require that we look at our actions and ask ourselves if there is a reasonable way to achieve what we want or need with less expenditure of resources.  They do not counsel the manipulation of science to sell a mindset.  That’s just wrong.  It has resulted in thinking people everywhere, looking at every new ‘scientific’ declaration with much skepticism.  And who can blame us?  Shabbat shalom.    

In Defence of Oren

So, I’ve read ‘The Book’:  Michael Oren’s Ally.  Then, after finishing it, I re-read some of the book’s most scathing critiques.

Let me state from the outset, that I think Oren presents what is probably the most fair, even-handed critique of the troublesome last few years of official Israeli-American relations.  On one hand, he dispels the worst of the charges of Anti-Semitism on the part of President Obama by attesting that The Big Snub (where Obama supposedly walked out of the room and left Bibi hanging) didn’t quite happen, and by systematically showing that there have been exceptionally positive moments in the Bibi-Obama relationship that don’t always get reported in the sensationalism-hungry media.  On the other hand, he applies the rational analysis of a true academic thinker – not just someone with the letters PhD after his name – to the language Obama has used in various speeches, and to his attempts to understand Obama’s various fallings-out with Netanyahu, to try to grasp what the man is all about.  And that analysis reveals some of the ambiguities of the 44^th President of the US that leave most of us – excepting his most loyal fan base and his biggest knee-jerk detractors – perplexed and sometimes, troubled.  If you want proof of this, contrast Oren’s reaction to President Obama’s first inaugural speech (before he was the Ambassador, whilst he was teaching at Georgetown) and Obama’s speeches, early in his first term, in Cairo and Istanbul.

Oren does not pretend that this book is a work of objective, academic history; in his foreword he makes it clear that he’s presenting a memoir, a first-person account of events in which he has an emotional investment.  This makes the charges of subjectivity, leveled by The Forward’s editor-in-chief Jane Eisner and repeated sometimes verbatim by others who want to demonise Oren, well…irrelevant.  He tells you from the outset that it’s a labour of love!  And yet, if not entirely objective he is patently fair-minded, clearly a passionate centrist, one who tries to see the merit in different people and their positions.  I refer you to his concluding chapter, where he is now an MK in a party (Kulanu) other than Netanyahu’s Likud (although they are in the current coalition) and he expresses his opposition to Bibi’s speech to the US Congress and the most vocal aspects of his opposition to the Iran Deal whilst at the same time, trying to show how the Deal is a potential disaster to Israel.

Actually, Oren’s entire narrative is infused with mixed feelings about Bibi, whom he never especially favoured before being selected to be ambassador, being clearly more to the ‘dovish’ side of centrist than the ‘hawkish.’  Yet Oren tried to serve Bibi loyally and in getting to know him personally, developed a more positive view of the man than either the American or Israeli press wants you to have.

So why are a number of prominent Jewish voices so negative about Oren’s book?  At least, why do I think so?  I know that I’m going to ruffle a few feathers by saying this, just as Oren ruffled feathers in writing the book.  And forgive me – I know you won’t, you’ll mutter charges of ad hominen – but it comes down to two main features of the Jewish-American political landscape.  One, the ongoing love affair of Jews with the Democrat Party but particularly with its current standard bearer, President Obama.  And two, the conflict of identification as liberal, and wanting to see oneself as liberal, at a time when the liberal world is increasingly, and gleefully demonising the State of Israel.

Although Eisner dismisses Oren’s alleged lack of comprehension over why American Jews overwhelmingly backed Obama, it becomes quite clear in the book that Oren completely ‘gets it’; what he doesn’t get is why, after six years, they still see Obama as an almost-messianic figure who is beyond criticism.  Just listen to the cries of ‘foul’ that come from some quarters in the Jewish community – Oren, Bibi, the Republican Caucus, Rabbis like me who have gone over to the Dark Side – criticises the guy. 

So now take Oren’s minor thesis – I say ‘minor’ because it’s little more than a sidebar to the thrust of his narrative, although it seems to be a major point of contention – that perhaps, the continued (and often unconditional) support of President Obama can be attributed to a lack of confidence and basic insecurity of our position as Jews and Americans.  It may be spot-on, it may be totally wrong, or it may be somewhere in between.  But given Oren’s observations and the tone of the book, it certainly is not wrong-headed.

If you haven’t yet read Ally, it’s a good and thoughtful read.  Buy a copy, or get it on your Kindle, and put it in the queue of things to get around to!  Read it in good health…

   

The Choice: A Reflection for Parashat Re’eh, Saturday 15 August 2015

Last night I spoke of happiness as a choice.  Of how the degree, to which we are willing to count our blessings determines, to a great extent, our destiny in life.  Of how each one of us can reach deep within ourselves for the sufficiency that each one of us possesses…unless and until we have obliterated it over time.  I mentioned the symptom of people who, by conventional measure, should be the happiest people on earth.  And yet, their actions reveal that they are patently miserable despite everything, with which they’ve been blessed.

          The converse is often true.  Every one of us probably knows someone who, despite great privation, is able to achieve true happiness.  We look at such individuals and we wonder; what is it that enables that person to achieve what eludes most others?

          Of course, just because there are people who have so much yet are unhappy, and people who have so little yet are happy, does not mean that we must look at ‘conventional wisdom’ as being the opposite of reality.  And what counsels against that viewpoint is that most of us are neither fabulously wealthy nor hopelessly destitute.  And yet happiness eludes so many of us.  The truth is that, conventional wisdom simply has no connection to reality.  So if our quest for happiness is to bear fruit, we simply must reject conventional wisdom altogether. 

I spoke last night about lists we mentally make.  One list might include everything we have.  The other, everything we don’t have.  Happiness is not in proportion to the length of the first list, so long as we keep in mind the second.  Because no matter what our station in life, the second list will always be longer than the first.  So the solution is to forget about the first list altogether.  And to be constantly mindful of how much is contained on the first list.  And to be thankful for it.

          Last night I mentioned how this week’s Torah reading lays out, in part, a formula to reach for happiness.  It’s simple.  Enjoy, but never forget your obligations.  Avoid the extremes of asceticism and hedonism.  The road to happiness passes through the vast territory in the middle.

          But in truth, we need not look past the opening verses in our parashah to see a Divine truth regarding the ultimate outcome of our lives.  See, I present before you today a blessing and a curse.  The blessing, that you hearken to the commandments of Hashem, your G-d, that I command you this day.  And the curse, if you do not hearken to the commandments of Hashem your G-d, and you stray from the path that I command you today, to follow the gods of others, that you did not know. (Deuteronomy 11.26-28)

          This dictum, if we consider it at all, can easily lead us to torpor.  After all, we don’t go around worshipping other gods…do we?  We know that, in the ancient Near East, the peoples worshipped a multiplicity of gods which resided in various temples and which were served by the priests and other functionaries of the various pagan cults.  That doesn’t describe us at all.  We come to Jewish worship exclusively.  And we pray from the Jewish siddur which talks about the indivisibility of Hashem.  And we do not add sacred books to the Torah.  So, at least on the surface, this caution is not talking about us.

          But it is.  Because the essence of avodah zarah, or idol worship, is not using statuary to represent G-d.  Rather, it is trust in material objects to provide our salvation.  And that is something that we all do.  So we’re told to eschew asceticism.  But we’re also warned about hedonism.  And hedonism is, for most of us in our world today, the idolatry of choice.  It doesn’t feel like the idolatry that the Torah is cautioning us against.  We don’t literally bow down to our possessions, and beg them to save us.  The way that the ancients did to the statues in their temples.  But if we’re honestly reflective, we can see how we rely on possessions to lead us to wholeness.  And equally, if we’re honest we can see the futility in this reliance.

          So this dictum, to serve only Hashem and not gods that we do not know, is easy to dismiss as irrelevant to us.  As having to do with someone else.  For example, the followers of the religions that we see as being in error.  But we would be well-advised that the opposite is true.  That the mindset represented by idolatry is a common pitfall in life.  And even those who are outwardly loyal only to Hashem, are subject to it.

          But there is another common pitfall, and it explains why I pound this theme again and again.  Some of you will listen to my repeating this theme and ask themselves:  does he think we’re all crass materialists?  And the answer is a responding no!  But we don’t often give ourselves the credit for possessing the good values and balance that we already have.  And not internalising the merit from comes attached to it, is effectively the same as not having it.  One might look to those around him, like someone who has his priorities straight.  But inside, he is suffering.  Because he still sees himself as lacking.  Because whilst he behaves in ways that are praiseworthy, he does not count his blessings.

          Today, let us look at the choices arrayed before us.  There is blessing and curse in those choices.  Almost nobody deliberately chooses curse!  Nevertheless, the choices that we make lead ultimately to blessing…or curse.  Sometimes, we must look beneath the surface, away from the obvious, to understand the nature of our choices.  This morning, the Torah reminds us of the consequences.  Choose blessing.  And you shall be blessed.  Shabbat shalom. 

Sufficiency, Again: A Reflection for Parashat Re-eh, Friday 14 August 2015

I know that in my speaking, I tend to return to the same themes, over and over.  I imagine that when you hear me winding up to address a topic you’ve heard me address in the not-so-recent past, you cringe.  Or at least, roll your eyes!  But this is an occupational hazard.  Of my occupation, that is.  And it was anticipated.

          In my third year of rabbinical seminary, I took a year-long class in homiletics.  This is a fancy name for the art of the sermon.  The drasha, in Hebrew.  Now on the first day of our third year, we had already been giving sermons for at least a year, in conjunction with our second-year student pulpits.  The seminary faculty must have hated the people in those congregations where they sent us, to have us preach to them for a year before teaching us how to preach…

          So on the first day of that year-long class in homiletics, my teacher, Rabbi Michael Cook, told us something very jarring to our young, idealistic minds.  He told us that each one of us had One Sermon (upper case ‘S’) in us, and that we were going to struggle most of our careers until it came out the way we intended.  And then we would retire!  Along the way, we would speak on other topics, but The Sermon would always be there, trying to get out the way we wanted to say it.

          I’m not yet retired.  That should tell you that I have not yet succeeded in telling The Sermon the way it’s supposed to be told!  And since I speak over and over about one concept, you can tell that that’s the subject of The Sermon, and you can critique what I say in light of knowing its subject.

          And of course, the subject is Sufficiency.

          I told my children over and over, when they were growing up, Count your blessings!  In other words, take a good look at what you have and be thankful for it.  This, rather than ruing that, which you do not have.  Because the list of the latter will always be far longer than the list of the former.  And that holds true, no matter who you are and how much you have.

          I know of a couple who, by conventional measure, should be the happiest people I know.  They live in a palatial home.  They own both Rolls Royce and Jaguar automobiles.  They have a 107-foot superyacht, with a professional crew, at their beck and call.  They can have just about any luxury that the rest of us dream about.  But they are one of the most unhappy couples I have ever met.  And out of that unhappiness, they manipulate and exploit others to make them unhappy.  This, because they can’t allow themselves to be ‘bested’ by anybody in anything.

          Everybody knows someone like this.  Oh, the one you know might not be quite so wealthy.  Because unhappiness does not discriminate according to socioeconomic status.  But its source is usually, essentially the same.  Not counting one’s blessings.  And as a result, allowing oneself to wallow in the unhappiness that comes from not being satisfied by what one has.  From not recognising the sufficiency that one already has.

          Now, before you excoriate me for over-simplifying the sources of unhappiness.  Yes, I’m aware of the existence of mental illness.  You can’t tell someone suffering from clinical depression, or bipolar disorder, or any number of deeply debilitating disorders, to simply get over it.  I’m not here to obliterate entire disciplines of healing.  But I will say this.  Most mental disorders do not have organic causes.  A lot result from choices people make.  Drug and alcohol addictions are probably the most obvious.  Such addictions, when one develops them, must be treated as the illnesses they are.  But most times their root is that basal unhappiness that I’m talking about.  That unhappiness that comes from not finding sufficiency in what one has.  A person who is happy does not find it necessary to anesthetise his mind with recreational drugs or alcohol.  These addictions so debilitate their victims, that they lead to other disorders as one becomes less and less capable of coping.  And when one descends into the dark world of addiction and resulting mental illness, it is a difficult climb back into the light.  It takes far more than just a positive attitude.  But it is impossible without a positive attitude!  And a positive attitude from the start, an attitude of count your blessings, may have averted the abuse that lead to the descent.

          Dennis Prager wrote a book about happiness.  He called it:  Happiness is a Serious Problem.  Why is happiness, according to Prager, a problem?  \precisely because it is so elusive, for so many.  Prager makes a very provocative statement in his book.  He asserts that we are obliged to be happy.  Not that being happy is something we should afford ourselves, but he does make that point as well.  He writes that being happy is nothing short of an obligation.  And he further asserts that the obligation to be happy, comes from no less a source than the Torah.

          In this week’s portion, Re’eh, we find a glimpse into the Torah’s formula for happiness.  Moses instructs the Israelites to enjoy the bounty of the land.  To eat until satisfied.  And not just eat anything:  to eat meat in abundance, the meat of all permitted species, to enjoy an ongoing barbeque of plenty as long as they do not consume flesh with its life-blood in it.  Sorry, vegetarians!  Hashem has told us that we can eat meat:  the meat of the beasts of the field, the meat of the fowl of the air, and the meat of the fish of the sea.  Wonderful, glorious meat!  

          But then, after the instructions that might make one think that one should eat until one’s wallet is empty, we are told something else.  We must pay our tithes to sustain the worship of Hashem and the teaching of His word.  And we must take care to share what we have with the orphan, the widow, and the destitute.

          In other words, we should consume and enjoy.  But we must keep things in perspective.  Eat, drink and be merry!  But leave enough so that, if you see someone suffering, you have something left to help them.  Because that’s the key to sufficiency.  Enjoy, do not practice self-denial.  But do not consume as if there’s no tomorrow, because somewhere there is someone who needs our help.

          The couple whom I mentioned earlier is an extreme example.  Many of us think ourselves poor, or of modest means.  Since we have so little, then we’re not guilty of thinking ourselves deprived…because (of course) we are!  But each one of us enjoys blessings that we often do not see.  Yet we don’t, because our mindset is to focus on that second list, the one that’s always longer.  The list of the things we lack.  The list might include material things.  Wealth.  Good looks.  Good health.  Smarts.  Time in abundance.  If we’re honest, we know that we tend to count, and count, and count, the things that we don’t have.

          This hints at why we emphasise Shabbat so much in Jewish life.  On Shabbat, we are told to go out of our way to take delight.  And so we eat lavish meals.  And drink.  And sleep in.  And don’t run the dishwasher.  Or boot up the computer.  And find time for the things we deny ourselves the rest of the week.  I’ve just described the ideal.  If that does not sound like even a partial description of your Shabbat, then you’re denying yourself something precious.  The closer we approach that ideal, the more we achieve a feeling of well-being.  And the more we learn to reach for that well-being all week long.  Shabbat shalom.