To Listen and Solve

We live in an ever-more violent world.  I think we can all agree on that, and together we look with trepidation on the world around us and wonder who will be the next victims of seemingly-random violence.  And yet, when we talk about the roots of the violence we see an ever-widening gap between two distinct worldviews as to how we might address and rein in this violence.  The gap is so wide that when we representatives of the two worldviews talk to one another, they sometimes seem to be speaking entirely different languages.  Nay, what really seems to be the case is that they are situated in two parallel universes, from which the denizens of one universe can see and hear those of the other but cannot penetrate the transparent-yet-impermeable boundary between the two.  That is, when they bother to acknowledge the voices of the other worldview at all.

I was reminded of this the other day, driving home after dropping my daughter at the airport for a flight to Denver to return her to school after the Thanksgiving holiday.  While driving, I listened to a program on a public radio station.  It was a replay of a forum on gun violence that had taken place, and been broadcast live, from San Francisco some weeks back.  It was just the thoughtful kind of forum that I like; a multi-disciplinary panel consisting of prominent individuals from various professions and therefore viewpoints, discussing the various ramifications of apparently-increasing gun violence in America and ideas for ‘common sense’ measures to address it.  But as I listened, I realized that this panel, whilst representing a variety of specific viewpoints into the issue, was at one in the basic premise:  the solution for gun violence is to decrease – for some, drastically – the number of legal guns in the hands of certifiably law-abiding people.  Now that is an entirely valid viewpoint, albeit problematic from the standpoint of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and would certainly be legitimately represented on any panel whose purpose is to problem-solve for gun violence.  But it is not the only viewpoint, and the limiting of the panel in question to advocates for that viewpoint condemned what might have been a valuable discussion, to irrelevance.

 The interesting point in the program was when, in wrapping up the discussion, the panelists actually addressed this one-dimensional aspect to the session and more-or-less celebrated it!  Several of the participants talked about how wonderful it was to discuss the issue rationally, without the interference of the contrarian view that fewer guns is not the answer. “We know they’re wrong,” declared one panelist, an activist representing a public interest NGO. “If we’d included them, they would have come with the same tired old arguments based on lies and inaccurate statistics.”  And several other panelists expressed assent!

 Various debates that are raging in society today – not just that on how to address gun violence – are stymied by one side’s mania for silencing the other side as an illegitimate voice.  The idea of freedom of speech, enshrined in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, has been under attack for a long time.  The term ‘Political Correctness,’ coined sometime in the 1980’s but which came into common usage in the 1990’s, describes the tendency to make us curb our speech whenever it may offend someone else.  To those who decry the tendency, it represents a good idea – that we should guard our tongues (and quills) to avoid inadvertently offending someone whose context we cannot grasp – that went awry as people stammer and stutter to express themselves forthrightly in a society where almost anybody can be offended about anything.  And lately, the term Political Correctness is itself under attack in the wake of the campus demonstrations at the University of Missouri, where it has been asserted that to invoke the term Political Correctness out of exasperation with the stifling of Free Speech is patently offensive.

Social media – and I’m referring specifically to Facebook – could be a wonderful tool for enabling people of diverse viewpoints to converse with one another.  But increasingly, it has become a medium for people to sound off, usually in barrages of links to articles and online videos that support the poster’s viewpoint.  When scanning my newsfeed of posts by my Facebook ‘friends,’ I’ll sometimes read one of the articles in question or view one of the videos.  But this phenomenon of ‘dueling links’ is hardly a constructive way to conduct a discussion.  I’ll give an example.  On a Facebook group for Rabbis who are members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, someone posted a discussion question about gun control in the wake of the gun violence event on the Oregon small-town community college campus several weeks back.  Now this particular poster and I seldom agree on much of anything, but I respect him as a reasonable person wanting to grasp solutions to big problems, so I responded to his post with a contrarian viewpoint, presented as reasonably as I could.  Immediately, a new party to the discussion countered with a raft of links to articles that allegedly refuted what I was saying.  Now, wanting to have a true discussion where all parties try to take in all legitimate discussion points, I clicked on the first link and started to read the article.  And it turned out that the article didn’t refute my viewpoint at all, but its headline did not hint accurately to the writer’s conclusions.  In other words, the person entering the conversation and offer a counterpoint to my position, instead of thoughtfully entering the conversation, chose to fire what he thought were shots over my bow with some big guns instead of reading the article in question, citing it and digesting it for the forum.  But that’s not all.  After a couple of days of back-and-forth discussion in the thread, the original poster expressed frustration over the discussion not resulting in a coming together of the participants over one – presumably his – viewpoint.  I responded to his frustration by pointing back to his original post, asking for a measured response by others who might disagree with him so that he might begin to understand the other side of the issue.  On that he backtracked, but to me it was clear:  the aim of this person whom I still see as generally reasonable, was not understanding but convincing, as in convincing parties holding the view opposite his that they were simply wrong.

So last Friday afternoon, whilst driving from place to place, I heard the news report from Colorado Springs; a ‘gunman’ (I really don’t like that term, terrorist is far more accurate for most usages) had shot several people at the city’s Planned Parenthood clinic and was in a protracted standoff with police.  If you follow my writings, you know that I have a connection to Colorado Springs, where Clara and I created a domicile after I retired from the US Air Force; this event unfolding in Colorado then was, for me, personal.

The standoff ended after some five hours after it began.  The perpetrator was identified as a sort of Ted Kaczynski type, a wild-eyed hermit with a tendency for incoherent ravings that don’t seem to identify him with a particular political position, just with a generalised rage at society.  The only connection between anything he’d said, to an opposition to abortion, rational or otherwise, was his alleged muttering to one of the police officers taking him into custody: “no more baby parts.”  And even that was unattributed, the lack of attribution explained by the reporter’s stating that the source had no permission to speak for the police department.  That alleged comment aside, nothing was reported from a search of Robert Louis Dear’s three residences, or his online presence – if any existed – to indicate a political orientation and affiliation with the Pro-life Movement.

And yet, already on Saturday morning we began to hear – first from the CEO of Colorado’s Planned Parenthood organisation – that the killer was firmly in the camp of the anti-abortion crowd and was acting out of the ‘hate’ of members of that group for Planned Parenthood, and that this sort of thing is the natural result when groups try to limit women’s access to abortion-on-demand.  I read this article in Saturday’s Washington Post, meaning that the article had already been written Friday night.  The article went on to state that the candidates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency have been silent on the issue.

Well, duh!  Why respond, except perhaps a brief tribute to the three individuals – only one of which, a police officer from the nearby university campus who had joined the city police in responding, had been identified at that point – who had died in the gunfire.  Since little was known about Mr. Dear, and even less about his motivation for the attack, wouldn’t it make sense that a rational person would withhold judgement?  But again, that’s far too rational for many of the voices in the ongoing kulturkampf in American life, where some participants are entirely intent on illegitimising, and therefore stifling, any voice that expresses a viewpoint counter to their own.

In Jewish life generally, when discussing the need to discuss issues at length rationally, we point to the opposing schools in antiquity of Hillel and Shammai.  The two sages, and their respective followers, had very different approaches to the application of law passed on the Torah’s prescriptions and proscriptions.  A sage of a later generation proclaimed that ‘both represent the voice of the Living God, but the law holds with Hillel.’  And why was that?  The answer was given:  because the sages of the School of Hillel were more humble, and respectful of the other side, listening to their arguments before presenting their own.  We find this enshrined in the Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b.

The principle we learn from the passage is that a healthy and respectful debate is a good thing.  And that one side’s tendency to shut down the other side results in, their own arguments ultimately being over-ridden.  And I think the reason is clear; those whose debating tactic is to shut down the other side, clearly recognise that they haven’t got a winning argument to present.  My hope is that society will not be fooled by this tactic of delegitimising the other side.  That instead they will look at the delegitimisers with skepticism.  Perhaps that is far too optimistic on my part.  Time will tell.  A good week, all!

Israel Hayom (Today)

If you have wondered why I haven’t been posting for a couple of weeks, then that makes me happy…it means somebody is actually reading my musings!  But if you are wondering, then that also means I owe you an explanation.  Clara and I have taken a trip, I guess you might call it a holiday, abroad.  We went to Israel to attend to some family business, not the least of which is to spend some time with our son, Eyal, before his induction into the Israeli Army.  Other family business has included Clara being present for our families in Israel and in the USA.  We’re both at the point in life of having ageing and ailing parents and other family members.

This has been my first visit to Israel in almost eight years, the longest interval since I met Clara that I have not travelled to Israel.  Although the purpose of the visit is family, I can't not use the occasion to make some general observations about Israel Today – thus the title of this essay – to offer you, my reader.

Let me start by stating in the interest of disclosure, as if it were necessary, that I make no claim of impartiality where Israel is concerned.  When I offer my observations as I will do here, I try to do so dispassionately and rationally.  But I don’t claim the mantle of impartiality.  Frankly, I don’t think one is likely to find a single individual on the planet who is impartial about Israel and its place in the world!  (Okay, an exaggeration…but not by much!)

Because Israel has been in the news lately – as she always is – due to the recent tensions with her Palestinian Arab neighbours, I think the current security situation is a good place to start.  As you may know, some weeks back – around the Jewish New Year – there began a new round of Palestinian violence toward Israelis.  Some say that this may represent the start of a ‘Third Intifada.’  The Intifada (the first one), which took place between 1987 and 1991, was an uprising mostly of youth and children, who attacked Israelis in the Palestinian-dominated areas – the so-called ‘Occupied Territories’ – with stones and other weapons that children might use.  Although there is a popular – and largely erroneous – image that the Western Media has cultivated and perpetuated, that this was a spontaneous uprising of desperate children, at least initially unsanctioned by their parents or the Palestinian leadership, there are Arab writers who have soundly debunked that as fiction.

The Second Intifada, sometimes referred to as ‘the Al Aksa Intifada,’ broke out in the year 2000 and lasted until 2005.  It was more an ‘adult uprising’ in which the weapons of choice were suicide bombs.  This round of violence resulted in far more fatalities – on both sides – than round one had.  In dealing with the violence, the Israelis instituted drastic curbs in the numbers of Gaza and West Bank Palestinians working and otherwise entering Israel; the Israelis erected elaborate border fence systems and restricted travel to Israel for Palestinians who could be well-vetted.  These fences have largely worked; they made it very difficult to carry out attacks in Israel proper and certainly contributed greatly to the fizzling out of the Second Intifada.  To replace the lost workers, Israel imported Guest Workers, largely from Romania and Thailand.

This ‘Third Intifada,’ or ‘Intifada of Knives’ (as some are calling it) is a war being waged by a range of the Palestinian demographic, but notable is that many of the attackers are women and teenagers.  The weapons of choice are knives, and vehicles:  as in deliberately crashing cars into groups of Israelis congregating on the streets, for example at bus stops.  That’s not to say that other weapons have not been used.

When we first arrived in Israel in the second week of November, things had quieted down a bit.  We can attribute this in part to the way the Israelis have reacted to the latest round of violence.  In large part, this has consisted of a stance of greater vigilance in their daily lives.  The other part is that Israelis have taken to responding, a la the passengers on United 93, fighting back against the attacks when they occur.  Enrollment in Krav Maga classes, including for middle-aged Israelis, is way up.  As are requests for gun permits.  Someone attacking civilians on an Israeli street is increasingly likely to be set upon my civilian bystanders before the police or army can react.  The Israelis are tired of the violence and increasingly realise that the only way to fight it is with violence.

Earlier this year, there was an interesting video that made the rounds of the social media, where a candid videographer tailed young Muslim women in Hij’ab for ten hours on Israeli streets in marketplaces.  The point of the video was to show the reaction of Jewish Israelis to the woman, or more accurately, the lack of reaction.  When the Israelis in these crowded places visibly reacted to the woman at all, it was usually positively:  with a smile and friendly nod.  (View the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbYopiz6sLg )  Walking around on Israeli streets recently, I saw few Hij’ab or Niq’ab – clad women, and when they do circulate among Israelis today, I’m guessing they are looked upon with more interest and suspicion.  That’s because several of the recent knife attacks have been carried out by Niq’ab and Hij’ab – clad women.  They are the ‘stealth fighters’ of this round, in the way that children and youth were for Round One.  That said, I did see a Muslim woman in the shouk (open-air marketplace) in Ashkelon the other day, and nobody seemed to be paying her any heed.  She seemed like just one more example of the incredible ethnic hodgepodge that is Israel today.

(The video in question, which was posted on YouTube and liberally circulated on Facebook, seemed to have as its purpose to show a contrast to another video, where a man donned the dress and trappings of an Orthodox Jew – yarmulke and ritual fringes – and walked around Paris for ten hours where Muslims and ‘Europeans’ reacted very strongly and very negatively.  View the video at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AltyhmrIFgo)

(I might also add that Ashkelon, located only a few minutes’ drive north of the Gaza Strip, is sometimes referred to as a city that has been cleansed of Arabs, where until 1948 it was an almost-exclusively Arab town.  Arabs and their supporters in the Western Media sometimes point to Ashkelon as an example of the Israelis’ atrocity of expelling huge numbers of Arabs from their new state, considered the Original Sin of the founding of the state for which there apparently is no atonement apart from just going away and letting the ‘original inhabitants’ return to reclaim what they lost.  But over the years, as I’ve strolled the streets of Ashkelon, I’ve never found them to be anywhere near Arab-free.  When I first became acquainted with the city, there seemed to be more Arabs present, because at that time the border between Israel and Gaza was much more open.  One used to see legions of Palestinians from Gaza, coming into Israel daily to work, either in her cities or on her farms.  Now, Gazans enter Israel in much fewer numbers, and additionally Ashkelon’s population has grown exponentially with waves of new arrivals from the Former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, and more recently, France.  So very likely, the Arab woman I saw in the Shouk last week represents a segment of the population whose members have remained static whilst the population as a whole has grown.)

Although knife and vehicular attacks seem to be the preferred tactics in this round, two days before I flew to the USA there were two attacks resulting in death:  one by a knife-wielding man in Tel Aviv, but the other by a gunman on a highway in Gush Etzion, a settlement bloc on the West Bank south of Jerusalem.

In the past, I’ve noticed that any conversation with Israelis seems to quickly devolve to ‘the Situation,’ that is, the security situation.  This time, it seems to come up in far fewer conversations, at least as their opening subject.  I don’t know why this is so.  Perhaps the Israelis, despite their taking positive measures to protect themselves from the latest threat, are simply weary of the Situation and want to focus on the rest of life.  Security is heightened – there are bag checks going into every shopping centre and guards outside many shops and restaurants – but that has been the case since 2000.  Young Israelis after their army service and their post-service holidays who haven’t yet figured out what they want to be when they ‘grow up,’ can always find employment as security guards.  They are an institution that has become a fixture in Israeli life.  But that aside, Israelis seem less fixated on the security situation than they have been in past years.

That said, the Israelis’ appetite for news has not ebbed at all.  The regular, top-of-the-hour radio news broadcast draws everybody’s rapt attention.  When some act of violence occurs, it is covered endlessly on TV and discussed ad infinitum on talk radio.  Regarding the latter I recently noticed something; the commercial radio airwaves in Israel are dominated by talk shows.  Flip through the FM dial, and almost all of the music stations are Arab.  Israelis listen to talk, not music.  The talk is often about people’s emotional reactions to the current events; people call in to kvetch, but it sounds less political than American or Australian talk radio.  There are also stations that play predominantly religious programming.  A notable exception to this lack of music radio is Galei Tzahal, the army’s radio station, where hip DJ’s play cutting-edge music.  Once the hourly news broadcast is over.

One can tell that the country’s population is growing fast; everywhere one looks, there are new apartment buildings going up.  Between waves of in-migration and a high birthrate – even secular families typically have three or four children, and the religious typically far more – the country’s population continues to explode.  The newcomers make for an incredible hodgepodge of sounds of different languages in the street, and exotic aromas of food brought from all over the world.  The mix of skin tones and styles of dress is becoming ever more diverse.  Israel has never been a country of garden suburbs, but the landscape seems even more vertical than it has been in the past. 

The country seems to have a perpetual housing shortage as people wait for the new buildings to be finished.  There is supposedly more derelict housing than in the past, but I have not seen it first-hand.  I have not been in the infamous Old Central Bus Station, a vast urban area in south Tel Aviv, which has reportedly become a haven of the homeless, mostly African migrants from Sudan and Eritrea who are in Israel illegally, since the new bus station opened in 1993.  Young people in Israel nowadays complain a lot about the cost of housing, but housing has always been relatively expensive in Israel.  That said, it is probably half the price in the smaller cities, than in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  Clara and I own a small unit in Ashkelon, 80 square metres, two bedrooms, in an old circa 1950’s building.  The tenants pay USD $450 per month.  We could probably get somewhat more, but the same couple, Ethiopian immigrants, has been with us five years and as they are reliable and quiet we have not raised the rent substantially over the years.

Since I mentioned migrants from Africa, I’d like to address that some have taken to considering the Israelis’ unwillingness to legally settle the illegally-arrived Africans as evidence of Israeli ‘racism.’  I don’t think one can make such a case.  As I mentioned above, Israel is among the most ethnically and racially diverse societies in the world with the common thread being that most of the newcomers are Jewish or at least have Jewish ties.  With so many Christian and Muslim-majority countries for them to take refuge in, there is no sound reason why Israel should absorb Christian Eritreans or Muslim Sudanese just because they crossed the border.  They have plenty of other potential refuges.  On the other hand, the Jewish Ethiopians are warmly welcomed and embraced because, being Jews, Israel is their natural refuge.  Besides which, they have nowhere else to go.  If the Israelis’ refusal to absorb Eritreans and Sudanese were evidence of ‘racism,’ why are the Ethiopians not only taken in, but viewed positively by so many Israelis?  The often-heard charge that Israelis are, as a group, ‘racist’ is just one more way that Israel’s detractors try to discredit her.  

Another area of growth in Israel in recent years, has been in transport.  With a high population density, it has always been a challenge to move large numbers of people around the country efficiently.  Travel by car is the most popular, despite that petrol is as expensive as it is in Australia, and despite the chronic congestion on the roads.  But the road network has improved markedly in the last few years.  Modern multi-lane highways with grade separation and well-engineered interchanges are found all over.  Highway 6, the Trans-Israel Highway, goes from Be’ersheva in the south up to near Haifa in the north.  It skirts the Dan bloc of cities of which Tel Aviv is the centre, following the Green Line for some of its distance.  It makes the north-south trip through the highly populated centre, much faster than before.  And everywhere one goes, highways are being modernized and widened.  Additionally, there is a fast and efficient rail service from Nahariya in the north to Be’ersheva in the south with an additional line from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and at least two new east-west lines going up in the Galilee, in the north.  Jerusalem has had an efficient system of trams or ‘light rail’ for several years, and now a similar system will be built in Tel Aviv.  Finally, there are bike paths and bike lanes all over.  Whilst push bikes have never been too popular in Israel – the hot climate makes them uncomfortable to pedal in the summer – they have grown in popularity as a lower-cost (and more fitness-inducing!) alternative to cars.  There has also been an explosion in electric bikes, which one sees buzzing around all over, used for recreation and for basic transportation.

The cost of living in Israel remains relatively low, certainly in relation to that in Australia and even when compared to the USA.  Although housing is an expensive item – see above – and such ‘luxuries’ as automobiles and electronics are as expensive as they are in Australia, basics such as food and clothing appear to be much cheaper.  Walking around the shouk and a supermarket, my impression was that basics such as fresh fruit and veg, meat and staples are somewhere between a half and two-thirds what they would cost in Australia.  And of course, almost any product you buy at either place is certified kosher!

To Get on with Life: A Reflection for Parashat Chayei Sarah, Saturday 7 November 2015

Last night I pointed out how this week’s Torah portion is known as Chayei Sarah, which means ‘the life of Sarah.’  But the portion opens with the account of the events following Sarah’s death.  Of course, it isn’t necessary to read so much importance into the titles, by which we know the various weekly Torah readings.  After all, the titles come strictly from their opening words.  They are not conferred because of the preponderance of the content of the ensuing chapters.  Even so, we can take important lessons from the juxtapositions of the portions’ titles and their content.  As I did last night.

          This morning, I want to take another lesson from another juxtaposition.  Our Torah reading informs us that, once he had seen to the details of Sarah’s burial, Abraham turned-to on important pressing business.  Torah tells us about Abraham:  ויבוא אברהם לספוד לשרה ולבכותה – So Abraham came to memorialise Sarah and to cry over (his loss) – and then in the next breath:  ויקום אברהם מעל פניי מייתו – So Abraham rose up from the face of his loss.  In the language of the Torah, the verb used here, ויקום – literally, he rose up, means “he turned-to and got on with the business of living.”  And what was that business?  Item One on the To-Do List:  see to purchase of burial plot.  Item Two:  acquire wife for son.  Item Three…and please don’t be shocked!  Marry another woman and make more babies.  Yes, as soon as he’d ticked the boxes on items one and two, Abraham started another family.  This, despite his well-advanced age.

          I’m not here to counsel those who have been widowed, to marry again immediately and start a new family whatever their age.  It may, given the circumstances, be an entirely reasonable progression of events.  But the main counsel to be derived from the Torah is this:  get on with the business of living.

          As you probably know, I have lived in Greece.  There, one sees many women who always wear black and present themselves in a severe manner.  They are widows.  One doesn’t see many widowers, because men are usually survived by their wives.  After all, women tend to live longer.  And marry men who are older than them.  So widows are very much in evidence.  And once widowed, a woman in traditional Greek society will don black for the rest of her life.  To show her status to the world.  To marry again would be unthinkable.  A widow rates a very important position of respect and even veneration in a Greek family.  She ‘gets on with her life’ by accepting the status of widow, and taking a place alongside her daughter-in-law in the management of her son’s household.

          Traditional Muslim societies are somewhat similar.  Phyllis Chesler, in her book An American Bride in Kabul about her brief and stormy marriage to an Afghani man in the 1970’s, writes about the – in this case, multiple – widows of her husband’s father vying for position in the household.

          Torah counsels a different way for those who would learn from her wisdom.  And the counsel is enshrined in Jewish law.  There is an extended period of mourning dictated for one’s parent.  But not for one’s spouse.  One who has been widowed, is allowed to marry almost immediately.  Not required.  But allowed.  And counselled to do so, if one cannot face life alone.  A man may marry as soon as the 30 days of mourning have passed.  And a woman?  Once 30 days of mourning have passed, and she’s sure she’s not pregnant by her deceased husband.  And the only reason for that constraint, is so that everybody will thus know the child’s patrimony.

          So it isn’t disloyal for a widow or widower to turn around and find a new partner shortly after losing their last one.  And for his or her children to object to the marriage on the basis that they are worried about their inheritance, is the height of selfishness.  It makes a mockery about the importance of the rest of the surviving parent’s life.  It is neither necessary nor desirable for the widowed person to forget the life they had with their deceased spouse.  But it is important for their life to continue.  To continue to experience moments of joy.  In the most natural way:  with a new partner.

          Abraham’s actions in this Torah reading teach us an important lesson for life.  We build a life around the partnership with our spouse.  At least, ideally we do!  When we commit to life with someone else, to make and raise a family, to create years of memories happy and sad, that becomes the focus of our life.  But for most of us, death does not come concurrently for both spouses.  Someone survives the other.  Abraham was burdened to survive Sarah.  He mourned his loss.  He took great pains to give her a proper burial.  Then he turned-to on important business.  He immediately set to the task of acquiring a wife for Isaac.  To continue his and Sarah’s line.  To make it possible for G-d’s promise to be fulfilled.  And then?  He decided that he needed to keep on living.

          Other life events, other than being widowed, may conspire to make us think that our lives are over.  We tend to take bitter disappointments in life, and see them as markers of endings.  We amplify the bitterness by mourning the life we once had, and what it meant to us.  Instead we should see these transitions as markers of beginnings.  Every tragic event, no matter how big a disappointment, can be our doorway into new rooms of happiness and meaning.  When we do experience such disappointments, may we have the strength and courage to see beyond our disappointment.  It doesn’t cheapen the loss.  It just brings meaning to it.  Shabbat shalom. 

Birth or Death? A Reflection for Parashat Chayei Sarah, Friday 6 November 2015

One of the most interesting aspects of moving about during one’s lifetime, of living in various countries, is the opportunity to see and experience the different customs.  And sometimes, seeing and experiencing the different levels of importance that are attached to specific customs.  And trying to understand it all.

          Take birthdays.  When I was a child, I looked forward to birthdays.  What child wouldn’t?  You get presents, and get to invite your friends to a party.  Where you, the child, are the centre of attention.  It’s all about you.  To a five or ten-year-old, that is a powerful feeling.

          With the reaching of the age of 13 – at least in Jewish circles – the birthday party is replaced by something far more meaningful.  Bar Mitzvah.  Now Bar Mitzvah does sometimes seem like a birthday on steroids.  Instead of being the centre of attention for his immediate family and friends, the child is now the centre of attention for the entire extended family and not only other children, but even all the adults in the congregation.  If that isn’t powerful, I don’t know what is!

          In my memory, the whole birthday thing pretty much became irrelevant after my Bar Mitzvah.  I remember no parties.  I do remember milestones.  Like, once past my 15^th birthday, I could get my restricted driving license according to Florida law.  So I did.  And once past my 16^th birthday, I could get an un-restricted license.  So I did.  And from my 18^th birthday, I could legally drink alcohol.  So I did.  And could register to vote, so I did.  And was required to register for Selective Service, so I did.  But there were no more parties, no more ‘big deals.’  Perhaps my mother may have prepared a favourite dinner to treat me on my birthday.  Or maybe the family went out to a favourite restaurant.  But parties and excessive celebration wee for children. 

As for my parents, one parent would remind me that the other parent’s birthday was approaching, so I would go out and buy a card, or produce one myself.  And perhaps buy a gift.  A small gift.  But birthdays were never big occasions.  I guess 55 was something.  I could join the AARP – American Association of Retired Persons – and use my membership card to get discounts for hotels and restaurants.  So I did.  But then I gave up my membership in the AARP because of their gushing endorsement of Obama Care.  Given the train wreck that that Obama Care has been – which was of course predicted by many astute analysts who were dismissed at the time as Republican shills – I feel vindicated.

          As an adult, I’ve had friends who made a bigger deal of birthdays.  But not such a big deal.  In other countries where I’ve lived, things seemed pretty much the same.  Birthdays are, by and large, for children.

Here in Australia, it seems that birthdays for adults are a much bigger deal than in other countries where I’ve lived.  I’m not going to speculate on why that’s so.  It’s just an interesting difference in life Down Under.  For example, a friend here celebrated her 40^th birthday with a big party in an event venue, including a catered meal and a karaoke show.  And that friend is someone who complains about constantly struggling financially.  I attended the party – and, in case she happens to be reading this, I enjoyed it! – but the idea of having such a party under the circumstances remains a mystery to me.

Here, it is common to even celebrate the birthdays of those who are no longer with us.  In a sense, I get it.  If Dad’s birthday was an important annual family occasion when he was alive, keeping track of its annual occurrence and celebrating it even after Dad is gone, is a way to keep alive the fondest memories.  I’ve seen friends drink a toast to a departed parent, or some such activity, on their birthday.  But in the Jewish world generally, the more prevalent custom is to use the person’s yahrzeit as an occasion for keeping memories alive.

Of course, the word yahrzeit means nothing more than ‘anniversary.’  But as a code word in Jewish life, it means the anniversary of someone’s death.

In civil life we keep alive the memories of notable historical figures by declaring a holiday on their birthday.  In America, for example, we celebrate the birthdays of Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King, Junior.  And then for others, we have no ‘official’ holiday on their birthdays, but we do note their annual occurrence.   But in Jewish life, we tend to celebrate the achievement of notables by marking their yahrzeits.  Perhaps you’ve seen video of the hubbub over Rabbi Nahman’s yahrzeit in Uman.  Or the fuss over Reb Schneerson’s in Brooklyn.

A gentile colleague once asked me about this difference of custom.  I told him that the point of remembering someone’s yahrzeit as opposed to their birthday, is not that Jews are obsessed with death.  Rather, that we commemorate one’s death because that’s the date when their life ended, and in doing so we are making a statement.  We are acknowledging the totality of what their life was.  Every day between their birth and death added to create their life.  It’s not that I think our non-Jewish neighbours miss this point.  It’s just that Jewish life may be more pregnant with symbology.  In any case, that’s what we do.  When we go through the process of burying and mourning the dead, we are in effect taking a ‘time out’ to contemplate the totality of what that person was.  And will eternally be.

So this Shabbat, we read from Parashat Chayei Sarah.  Which means ‘the life of Sarah.’  But the portion begins with the death of Sarah.  And proceeds to Abraham’s efforts to procure for his wife’s remains, an eternal resting place.  And his mourning of her.  Because all of that serves to point to the totality that was her life.  In honouring his departed wife’s memory by seeing to the details of her death, Abraham models for us the importance of ‘going through the motions’ because it helps clear the deck for the real business of internalising the memories.

When we honour the departed by noting the anniversary of their passing, we accomplish an important goal:  the goal of memory.  Of course, we remember our departed loved ones at other times.  Any occasion can evoke such memories.  I can’t tell you how many seemingly-random events have reminded me of the loss of my father.  Or my grandparents.  Including birthdays.  But when we note their yahrzeit, and allow the community to share the occasion with us, we are making an important statement about the value of one’s life.  And the important way that each person touches so many of those around him or her.  Which is surely what Abraham had in mind when he engaged in the activities chronicled by this week’s Torah reading.  Shabbat shalom.

Jewish Journeys Weekly Newsletter

Dear Friends,

Several important things going on this weekend.

Friday evening, 6 November, service at the Levy home, 6.30PM followed by a hot dinner.  Clara is preparing fish this Friday; for anyone planning to bring a dessert or side dish, dairy is acceptable.  Suggested donation $15 except for members.

Saturday morning, 7 November, service at the QCWA Southport Hall at 10.00AM.  Suggested donation $15 except for members.

After the Saturday service we will convene at the Levy's for lunch and conclude the 'As Kosher as You Wanna Be' mini-course.  Lunch will be dairy.  Suggested donation $20.

Sunday morning, 8 November, we invite you to join the annual Remembrance Day service for Jewish servicement and women, condcuted by QAJEX at Lutwyche Cemetary at 11.00AM.  If you come, plan to join together for an informal lunch at a Brisbane-area restaurant; be ready with suggestions!

The Intermediate Biblical-Prayerbook Hebrew class will be held at 5.00PM instead ot 10.00AM on Sunday 8 November, at Reva Pelton's home.

Clara and I are going overseas for a month starting Monday, 9 december.  Friday evening and Saturday morning services will continue.  Friday 13 November will be held at Reva's home.  Subsequent weeks' venues will be announced.  Saturdays will be at the QCWA Southport Hall as usual.

For more information on any of these events, feel free to contact me.  Looking forward to seeing you soon...

Rabbi Don