Happy Birthday, Israel! A Drash for Friday, 24 April 2015

Birthdays and Anniversaries are a funny thing.  Of course, they are a time for celebration.  But if we are really going to bring meaning to our lives, then we would be well-advised to use these milestones as an occasion for introspection as well.  Birthdays and anniversaries are a perfect time for taking stock and asking oneself:  Are things turning out the way I’d really like them to?  If not, what can I do to change things?  Looking ahead to the next year, what might I do differently?

          As with personal milestones, how much more so with collective milestones!  When a country celebrates its annual holiday, it is certainly a time for celebrating everything that’s good about that country.  All of her successes and achievements.  All the ways that the country’s very existence has enriched and improved the lives of her citizens.

          When approaching Israeli Independence Day, it is not difficult to celebrate in this way.  That the lives of most of her citizens are vastly better because of the outcome of the events of 1948 is, as the kids say today, a no-brainer.  In her earliest years, there were two predominant realities of the citizens of Israel.  One:  they survived the Shoah, the Nazi Holocaust and did so with their spirit, strength and initiative intact and even sharpened.  The second:  that they were forced out of the homes in the Arab World that their families had dwelt in for – in some cases – thousands of years.  And their host nations’ punishment to them for the Palestinian Jews’ daring to declare and found a state?  To force them to move en masse to that very state…a state set up in a homeland for which they had been praying for thousands of years!  So, whether a Jew found his or her way to the State of Israel as a refugee from the ashes of the destroyed civilization of the Jews of Europe, or from homes in the Arab World lost because of the state’s existence, here is no doubt that their moving to Israel represented an Aliyah – a going up – in every sense of the word.

          Go to Israel and the most outstanding feature of the landscape which you’ll note will be the extent to which she is, and I say this at the risk of using a phrase which has become cliché, a land of contrasts.

          Travelling through Israel, one cannot escape the reality that she is an ancient land; the physical reminders of past civilisations confront the traveler at almost every turn.  Never have I seen a country whose populace has such a passion for archeology, as Israel.  And I have also lived in Greece, where ancient ruins are everywhere.  But in Israel it’s not just the stones of the land that serve as a constant reminder of ages past.  Travel around, and one sees people whose dress and behavior hearkens to past centuries.  People who refuse to change their ways just because of the passage of epochs.  And I don’t mean only Jews; I think of communities of Christians, Muslims and others who live out a mindset for preservation.  And I also don’t mean this in a negative sense – it is wonderful to have a living link to the past.

          On the other hand the State of Israel is, at the age of 67, a relatively young country – barely through adolescence as these things go!  Not only is the country young; her population is relatively young.  The median age of Israel’s population is 29.3 years.  This compares to 37.5 years for Australia, 36.8 years for New Zealand, 40.5 for the United Kingdom, and 36.9 for the United States.  Given this fact, it is not surprising that there is in Israel a palpable vibrancy in the air.  It’s a young land, full of young people, who are full of energy and optimism.  And yet, Israel ranks 18^th in the world in life expectancy – 81.38 years.  She is just behind Switzerland, and ahead of Iceland.  For comparison, Australia is number nine at 82.15 years, New Zealand 25^th at 81.05 years, the UK 30^th at 80.54 years, and the USA 53^rd at 78.88 years.  

Israel is a country with one of the world’s highest standards of living.  According to the UN’s 2015 Human Development Index, Israel ranks 19^th of 187 nations in the world.  This is an incredible achievement and would seem counter-intuitive for several reasons.  First, so many of her citizens arrived as refugees, penniless and often without education, from places where they were severely persecuted.  One would think that the costs of absorbing, feeding, housing, educating and assimilating all these refugees would impose an economic cost that would drag Israel’s standard of living far lower.  And then there’s the crushing defence burden.  Per 1,000 population, 21.4 Israelis are serving on active duty in the defence forces – third highest in the world after North Korea and Eritrea.  And total military service – including reserves and paramilitary forces – is, at 78.8 per 1,000 the fifth highest in the world after North Korea, Armenia, Singapore and China.  And the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product that is spent on defence is the fourth highest in the world at 5.6 percent – behind Oman at 11.6, Saudi Arabia at 9, and Afghanistan at 6.4.  And the hidden cost of having so many men and women under arms at any given moment – and of paying and equipping them – should logically be a far lower national productivity and standard of living.  But Israel, in so many ways, defies logic.

Speaking of Gross Domestic Product, Israel ranks 32^nd in the world at $32,491.  This compares to Australia, 19^th in the world at $43,202; New Zealand, 28^th at $34,731; UK, 24^th at $38,259; and the USA 10^th at $53,042.

          Lists of achievements by Israel and her citizens frequently circulate the Internet; assuming that they are accurate, Israel is the world’s leader in so many critical sciences and technologies.  It is a country not only with an incredible amount of brainpower, but with a cultural climate which makes for the unleashing of an amazing amount of creativity in so many fields.

          I almost hesitate to use Nobel Prizes as a measure of a nation’s level of achievement, since the 2009 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama, for the potential for peace that his election to the US Presidency offered to the world.  That was certainly an empty-headed gesture on the part of the Nobel Committee.  But that aside, 12 Israelis have won Nobel Prizes.  Whilst this is not a high number in absolute terms, it is important to note that Israel ranks 11^th in the world for Nobel laureates per capita.  And this, from a country that has only been a country only about half the years since 1here the annual awarding of Nobel Prizes began in 1895.

(It should be noted that Alfred Nobel was a Lutheran, not a Jew as is popularly, and erroneously thought.  But in any case, Nobel died a year after the institution of the prize bearing his name.  Furthermore, the Nobel Committee is made up of Swedes and Norwegians.  There are some 15,000 Jews in Sweden, 0.158 percent of the population.  And some 1,300 Jews in Norway, 0.026 percent.  So it is highly unlikely that successive Nobel Committees were inclined to load their choices with Jews or Israelis…more likely the opposite.)

 Having said the aforementioned, it is good to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  The Arab citizens of Israel, at least some of them, join the Arabs of the world in mourning Israeli Independence Day as an Nakhba, the Catastrophe.  This, opposed to the Miracle that the Jews are celebrating the same day.  The point is that the Arab world insists on seeing the birth of the State of Israel as a terrible thing for the Palestinian Arab people not to mention the Arab peoples as a whole and even all of the realm of Islam, imposed on them by the Western World as a way of placating their consciences for allowing the Holocaust to happen.  Ignoring the assertion that Israel was imposed on the Arabs as far too complex for the current drash, this raises the question:  by what objective measure is the establishment and existence of Israel a Catastrophe for the Palestinian Arabs?  Did Israel’s independence rob the Palestinians of their independence?  Hardly.  UN Resolution 181 of 28 November 1947, commonly called in Jewish circles “The Miracle of Lake Success” after the town on Long Island where the UN headquarters was located at the time, called for the partition of British Mandatory Palestine into two states:  one for the Jews and one for the Arabs.  The Palestinian Arabs rejected the UN vote and never declared or established a state.  In the wake of the Israeli War of Independence, most of the land that the Resolution 181 had ceded to the Arab Palestinians, were occupied by Jordan and Egypt, obviously two Arab nations.  They could have helped the Palestinians to set up a state anytime from 1948 until 1967, but they did not.  So there never was a Palestinian state, and during the 20 years that the Arab world had the ability to create one unilaterally, they did not.  So the ‘Catastrophe’ of the Palestinians’ not having a state, iff one can reasonably call that a Catastrophe, cannot be blamed on Israel or anyone else in the world.

That said, what is the living condition of the “stateless” Palestinians?  It is possible to take a very objective measure of this.  Remember the life expectancy of Israelis, 81.38 years?  The Palestinian territories come out considerably lower at 75.01 years.  But compare that to neighbouring Arab countries:  Egypt at 73.7 years; Syria at 75.59 years; Lebanon at 75.9 years; and Jordan at 80.54 years.  So life expectancy among Palestinians in the territories is on par with three of the four neighbouring Arab countries whilst Jordan is not far behind Israel.  And let’s go back to the Human Development Index, in which Israel ranks 19^th of 187 countries.  The Palestinian territories rate considerably lower at 107^th.  But compare that to Egypt at 110^th and Syria at 118^th.  Jordan ranks considerably higher at 77^th, whilst Lebanon scores an even better 65^th. 

So what are we supposed to learn from all these figures?  That the Palestinian Arabs enjoy a quality of life that is on a par with the other Arab countries in the neighbourhood.  And those countries did not experience a ‘Catastrophe’ in the sense of losing some territory that might have belonged to them, to Israel or anybody else.  On the other hand Jordan scores considerably higher on most indices of quality of life, than her Arab neighbours.  Why do you think that is so?  I would assert that it’s because Jordan has the most stable and free society, including constitutional government, of all the aforementioned Arab countries.  And Israel could be said to have one of the most stable, free, and constitutional governments in the world.  It is this atmosphere of stability and freedom that gives Israelis and Jordanians a better life than the citizens of Egypt, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority.  Lebanon is a different case; it has a legacy of legitimate government, but the ethnic coalition that flourished in the country in the past has been rent by the interference of Syria and the Palestinians.

One more statistic to cite, and then I’ll lay it to rest!  Remember the median age of Israeli citizens, 29.3 years, and how that is much younger than the countries that those in this room are likely to represent?  For the Palestinian territories, the median age is 20.7.  That implies a high birth rate, sign of a healthy and optimistic populace, combined with a low infant mortality rate, sign of excellent diet and health care.  As for the last item, that is primarily he Israeli health care system – and Israel’s generosity in giving access to it to Palestinians from the territories.  In fact, the Israeli health care system cares for any Arab from a neighbouring country who presents at Israel’s border.  If you did not attend the recent United Israel Appeal dinner at which Brigitte Gabriel spoke, you missed a living testimony to this.  More recently, since the outbreak of civil war in neighbouring Syria, Israel has treated thousdands of Syrians injured in the fighting.

I have focused on the secular aspects of Israel in assigning credit for her successes.  But to get the whole story, it is necessary to go to the sources of Judaism.  And to the unique relationship of Hashem to His people.  In Israel, even the completely secular are likely to be informed and infused by the spirit of rachmanut towards their neighbours and one another, not to mention towards the entire world.  In so many catastrophes and natural disasters that occur far from Israel’s borders, Israeli relief crews are the first to offer assistance.  And that assistance is often among the most robust on the scene.  This spirit did not come from a vacuum.  It came from the Torah.  

That said, there is no more unanimity regarding the role of Torah and Halacha among Israelis Jews, than there is among diaspora Jews.  The Orthodox think the country is not religious enough, whilst the secular think it’s too religious.  And the non-Orthodox religious think that Orthodoxy has far too much power and influence over the affairs of state, whilst the non-Orthodox sector often feels marginalized.  But in all this noise of disagreement, there is agreement on an all-important principle.  The State of Israel, whilst offering equal rights and opportunities to her non-Jewish citizens who comprise a fourth of her population, exists to serve as the haven and the centre of the Jewish world.  To serve as a focus for the manifold aspirations of the Jewish people, wherever they live.  The exact relationship of diaspora Jews to the State of Israel is a difficult path that will always be fraught rough spots.  But let’s be patient; remember that Israel, at 67, is barely out of adolescence!  For now, each Jew must make his or her own context for connection with the Israeli state.  Trust me, it will be grist for Jewish disagreement for a long time!  

I started my discourse tonight with the premise that an anniversary such as this should be an occasion for collective introspection.  And so it should be.  But not for the reasons that the Jew-hating world would have you believe.  Israel faces many difficult challenges as she enters her 68^th year.  How to bring about a better life for more of her citizens.  How to further open opportunities to all.  How to relate better to the Jewish, not to mention he gentile world.  How to tell her story to a skeptical world.  How to approach the immanent acquisition of nuclear arms by Iran, who has sworn to wipe Israel off the map.  Israel’s challenges for the future are far from trivial.

Celebrate Israel!  Celebrate the unique energies that have created such a successful state under very difficult conditions.  And pray that the Arab world will someday learn to stop reflectively hating Israel.  Because only then will they learn to find similar success for themselves.  Shabbat Shalom.    

Which Imitates Which? A Drash for 17 April 2015

I have been known to use this pulpit as a confessional of sorts.  Why do you think I do this?  Am I, at heart, some kind of exhibitionist?  I hope you don’t think so.  The truth is that I want to expose common foibles by noting that I am as guilty of them as you might be…maybe more!  If I have the courage to admit my idiosyncrasies and tell how I’m working on them, then maybe you will have the courage to admit your own to yourselves…and begin to work on them.

          So, what is tonight’s confession?  Here goes…I have taken to watching, and planning my day around, The Bold and the Beautiful.  Four-thirty every afternoon on Channel Ten.  And on those days when I miss it, there’s a reprise broadcast the next morning at seven-thirty.

          Yes, your rabbi watches the soaps – or at least, one soap in particular – regularly.  I’m completely fascinated by the show, whose meandering plot unfolds day after day at a near-glacial pace.  And what a plot!  Everybody in three large families is connected by marriages, divorces, betrayals, bed-shifting, incest, and cradle-robbing.  Sex, sex, and more sex!  Everybody works in the high-powered fashion industry.  Yet nobody ever seems to be working!  They spend their time creating interpersonal drama.  For all that, they clearly are paid well.  The women are dripping in jewels, the men in expensive boy toys.  All live in magnificent homes, dine out all the time and travel extensively.

          I remember when, as a boy, I first heard the term ‘Soap Opera’ applied to such programs.  My mother patiently explained to me that the ‘soap’ comes from their sponsorship by soap companies.  Such companies as Colgate and Palmolive, before they became Colgate-Palmolive.  Procter and Gamble.  And the ‘opera’ part of the phrase refers to the melodramatic quality of their plots. 

          Maybe you’re wondering just why I feel that I must apologise for having become a devotee of this program.  If so, I’ll tell you that I’ve always harboured a certain contempt for those who are.  Years ago, in the USA I remember reading about how there was an ‘epidemic’ of devotion to those daytime soaps on university campuses.  I remember questioning the value of higher education if that’s what students had time for, and were drawn to.  Having left school before finishing my degree and having completed it through off-duty courses and testing, I began to feel acquitted for the way I’d spent my early adult years.

          And now here I am, fascinated by this slowly-unfolding melodrama played out in half-hour daily instalments on daytime TV.

          Everybody is familiar with the declaration that art imitates life, which originates with Aristotele.  And perhaps also with its antithesis, life imitates art, whose source is an 1889 essay by Oscar Wilde.  The question is:  which one is more correct?  I think the latter, at least in our day and age.  Look at the eternal popularity of the soaps.  And then look at how people you know, tend to play out their lives as an ever-unfolding melodrama – similar to the soaps’ plots.

          So I have spent a number of hours of my life, hours that I will never get back, watching The Bold and the Beautiful.  What could I possibly have learned from it?  I mean, if I’m standing in front of you on Friday night and talking about it, there has to be a lesson in it…doesn’t there?  Never fear; there is!

          The characters in The Bold and the Beautiful are mostly good people with good intentions.  And yet they repeatedly hurt one another as they live out their dramas.  So why do they live their lives as scripted melodramas, if it hurts people who are dear to them?  Because they are driven by the excitement of the drama.  Instead of accepting that most of life is calm and even boring, the drama is like a drug.  Once hooked on it, one needs more and more.  And because it is like a drug, one is unlikely to be able to own up one’s dependence upon it.

          We can see this quality in ordinary human discourse.  People who are essentially good, with good intentions, engaging in dramas that are hurtful to others.  But the drama itself becomes a driving force where the actors are unable to see what they are doing.  And thus they hurt one another.  But there are no gains whatsoever to be had.  At the end of the day, there is only hurt to spread around.  But those addicted to the drama cannot see it, any more than most alcoholics can be honest about their addiction.

          The radio personality – and bestselling author – Dennis Prager offers insight into the nature of evil in our world.  He observes, most accurately, that the majority of evil in the world is introduced by people who mean well.  We already know this principle from the cliché:  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Prager meant to apply it to the macro, where great utopian movements are founded by those with good intentions yet cause much suffering.  But it is also true in the micro sense, where we see people hurting those they love or at least regard highly, with their interpersonal dramas.

          In The Bold and the Beautiful, everybody is fabulously wealthy.  But in real life, we all struggle to one degree or another to provide for ourselves and our loved ones.  Why doesn’t that stark difference serve, as it might, to help us to differentiate our own lives from those fantasy lives on TV?  Adrian Cronauer, of Good Morning Vietnam fame, once helped me to see why.  He told me about the intense jockeying for position that he’d observed as an enlisted man in the US Air Force.  He told me this very matter-of-factly, but I filed it away as a profound truth:  “The competition is most fierce when there’s so little at stake.”  If we look at the dramas that we see people we know playing out, we can see this principle in action.  When the stakes are low, the backbiting only seems to increase.  One might think that to be counter-intuitive.  But the truth is that, in life, the modesty of resources does not diminish the melodrama.

          The stakes in our lives are lower, at least in the material sense, than those in the lives of the characters on The Bold and the Beautiful.  But in reality, by being lower they are actually higher.  Economics is, at its heart, the science that explores the consequences of the scarcity of resources.  Interpersonal drama is a lot like economics.  At its heart it is all about competition for resources of a different kind.  Some of those resources are intangibles:  things like love and self-esteem.  But the drama hides an essential truth.  Such resources are not limited; they are available in abundance!  The quest for such things, is not a zero-sum game.  But turning it into a zero-sum game adds excitement.  And is therefore something that we do, despite its being counter-intuitive.

          Like Brooke Logan Forrester, played by Katherine Kelly Lang.  Her particular drama is a subplot this week, on The Bold and the Beautiful.  She has been away in Italy for some months.  Having returned to LA, she finds that three different men – Ridge Forrester, Bill Logan, and Deacon Sharpe – with whom she has had relationships in the past are now committed to other women.  Brooke, unable to cope with this, is falling into alcohol abuse to bury the hurt.  The watcher awaits what drama Brooke will create to provide the succour she needs.  Her mistake is the zero-sum fallacy.  She is busy competing with others for ‘limited’ resources – the men she already knows and with whom she has already had relationships and children.  This, instead of looking for love in new places, with the new people she would surely meet if she were trying.

          If we could see this and other fallacies hidden by the drama of such programs as The Bold and the Beautiful, perhaps we could see how we create real-life drama based on fallacies.  And then we would be able to rise above such dramas and relate to one another.  And assuming goodness of intentions, we would also see goodness of results.  I expose these fallacies for this purpose only.  That we would learn to recognise, and therefore transcend them.  Shabbat shalom.

Eishet Chayil, Mi Yimtza? A Drash for Friday, 20 March 2015

Clara with our daughter, Ma'ayan in Surfers
Paradise

When I was 20 years old and enlisted in the US Navy, I went through the initiation rituals that are practiced, with some variations, by most military forces known to humanity.  I didn’t expect basic training, or ‘Boot Camp’ as it is called, to be especially difficult but I did expect some challenges.  I’d never been a PT ‘animal,’ so I expected to have to work hard at the running and calisthenics.  But those proved no problem for me.  We ran and did calisthenics every day, and that gradually whipped most of us into shape.  It turned out that the biggest challenge was…clothes-folding.

          Yes, clothes-folding!  Every article of clothing to be folded just so, everyone’s locker arranged according to a strict instructions.  During locker inspections, any discrepancies would result in a dump the contents of the locker in a heap amid shouts of: “You’re going to kill somebody!”  And then the offenders would have to do push-ups.  Lots of push-ups!

          Of course, the clothes-folding was just a way to teach attention-to-detail.  This is a skill that a 20-year-old male is not likely to have in great measure.  In the navy, no matter what one’s occupational specialty, attention-to-detail is critical.  In the high-stress environment of a warship, something not secured correctly, something not stowed correctly, something not attached correctly can cause an accident costing lives.

          But that doesn’t mean that some of us didn’t try to make the clothes-folding ritual easier.  We would fold each item as carefully and as we could, ensuring the most possible uniformity of the widths of the garments.  Then we would use the same two of each type – one on our bodies and one in the laundry, which was done daily.  So during the entire eight weeks we would wear only two tee-shirts, two pairs of undershorts, two pairs of socks and so forth.  Every night we would not have to re-fold the garments returning from the laundry as we would be wearing them the next day.  That left time for other chores, and less sweating over the minutiae of clothes-folding.

          There was a danger in this, of course.  If the folded skivvies looked unused, the inspectors would gig us for not circulating our supply.  And then the dreaded locker dump.  And the push-ups!  For those not circulating their skivvies, a typical ‘punishment’ – after the push=ups – was to wear a clean pair of skivvies on one’s head, walk around the room, and announce to each shipmate: “I’m going to kill someone!”

But we learned over time that they simply didn’t have time to inspect that closely. They would only notice unused skivvies if something else set them off.  So we continued taking our clean skivvies out of the laundry basket and putting them on.

          Of course, after Boot Camp, where it no longer matters that every pair of skivvies is folded the same width to the millimeter, I learned to circulate all my skivvies.  Or so I thought.  But I bought a few new packets of skivvies in December.  And just last week I noticed that every morning, I seem to be wearing the same worn-out, yet not quite ready to discard pairs every day.  That’s strange, I thought.  Every day, I pull my clean skivvies from the bottom of the pile in the drawer.  So, in the course of a week, I should be wearing some older pairs and some newer pairs.  But it seems that the same two or three are ending up covering my bottom.  And I’m sure that the new skivvies are in the mix.  When I brought them new ones home I made sure to open the packages and toss the new ones in the laundry.

          And then, finally, I realized what the problem probably was.  I asked Clara:  “When you put the clean underwear in the drawer, do you put it on top or on the bottom?

          “On the bottom, of course,” Clara answered. “That way you’ll wear all of them.”

          And then I started laughing like a madman. “I take from the bottom,” I told her. “To ensure I’ll use all of them!”

          Military men need attention-to-detail.  And of course, Clara herself has military training and experience.  As well as years working as a nurse, who have an equal need for attention-to-detail.

          So I’ve begun taking my clean skivvies from the top.  And the other day, Clara thought to ask me: “You are taking from the top now, aren’t you?”  It’s just one more illustration of how Clara makes my life easier and more pleasant.

Not taking stock of these ways that our partners enrich our lives is, I think, one of the main reasons that couples end up in family court.  Divorce rates are not an indictment of marriage, or of the quality of our relationships.  They attest to our learning not a appreciate one another.  And why do we appreciate one another less and less?  I think it is because we expect our lives to be fun and easy.  So when they aren’t – at least most of the time – then we begin looking for reasons.  And we usually find such reasons in our partners.  They’re not fun enough.  They don’t keep the house well enough.  They don’t cook well enough.  They don’t want sex enough.  Take your pick.

          From skivvies to sex, what a transition! But then, everything ultimately comes down to sex, doesn’t it??!  Just kidding!  Well, sort of…  The real transition is from skivvies to the sublime joy of a marriage partner who takes care of little details, week after week, without complaint.  And how we are sometimes so intent on doing things ourselves that we tend not to notice.

          There’s a Friday evening ritual that we practice at home, which we omit here at shule when we transition from the evening service to the blessings before dinner.  Every week, I ask all the ‘girls’ to bless the ‘boys’ with a special blessing, and then we switch roles and the ‘boys’ bless the ‘girls.’  But there’s a special blessing for husbands to bestow upon their wives, and that is for him to recite the 31^st chapter of Proverbs to her.  It doesn’t appear in the prayer book that we use.  In the politically-charged movement of Reform Judaism, it is considered anti-egalitarian.  It implies separation of gender roles.  It excludes, I suppose, same-sex couples.  And those who are widowed, or divorced.  So it didn’t make the cut in the siddur.  But I always derived joy from reciting it to Clara on Friday nights, because it speaks the truth:  that wives support their husbands in so many ways that are frequently unnoticed.  So at least once a week, we remind ourselves.  The chapter should be familiar to you; it begins Eishet Chayil mi yimtza?  A woman of valor, who can find?  

          Today is Clara’s birthday, my Eishet Chayil’s, according to the Hebrew calendar.  She was born on Shabbat Hagadol – the Shabbat immediately before Passover.  On the civil date of her birthday, she will be in the air, flying back from Colorado.  Actually, she’s going to miss her civil birthday this year.  That’s the day she’ll lose, crossing the International Date Line from east to west.  Sooo…happy birthday Clara; may you enjoy many more!

I Like Bibi: A Drash for 20 March 2015

I’ve always tried very hard to steer clear of ‘political’ messages in my drashes.  But with one caveat.  I reserve the right to make a blatantly political drash once a year…maybe twice!  But no more than that.  After all, it takes half a year to smooth all the ruffled feathers resulting from my doing so!

          So, tonight I’m going to take that prerogative, and make a blatantly political statement.  I like Bibi.  Bibi Netanyahu, that is.  The man whom Israelis elected this week for a fourth term as Prime Minister.

          American voters of the Left, and that includes most American Jews, tend to see their world in terms of BO and AD.  That is, Before Obama and its corollary, Anno Domini – Year of our Lord.  Lord Barack, that is.  The Jewish Left tends to see the current President as the One sent to free America from the clutches of the evil, openly-religious, jingoistic Republicans epitomised by the two ruiners of America:  George W Bush and Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney.

          Jews of an earlier generation – about two millennia ago – crowned some­one King Messiah and had some ‘splaining to do when he did not usher in the era of redemption foreseen by the Prophets.  So they came up with the notion that the Prophets were talking about the second time the Messiah would come, not the first time!  That was easier than just admitting their mistake.

          Left-wing Jews of this generation, who crowned President Obama as Messiah in 2008, likewise have had to account for the fact that the new King did not usher in an era of redemption.  But their explanation has been:  It’s all George W Bush’s fault.  He left such a mess.  Obama is struggling just to clean it up.  The latest malady blamed on George W Bush?  ISIS.  That’s right, folks!  The organisation did not even exist until 2011, and did not really become a major force in world jihadism until perhaps the last year and a half.  Yet it is the fault of ‘W,’ who left office in January, 2009.  But never mind that the current President in December 2013, dismissed ISIS as a “JV team.”  Is the Americanism is lost on you?  Let me explain:  JV, or “Junior Varsity” is a school’s B team in any given sport, the players who didn’t make the Varsity, or the A team.  The B team travels around, playing other schools’ B teams.  Nobody cares about them, nobody follows or attends the games.  So as recently as the end of 2013, President Obama dismissed ISIS as a nothing.  And now, Obama’s supporters make excuses for his not redeeming us with a Mighty Hand and an Outstretched Arm, saying, “It’s all George W Bush’s fault after all.”

          I know, I know!  First I said that this drash is about how I like Bibi.  But then, for the last three paragraphs, I’ve turned it into a rant against President Obama.  In reality, that’s what’s behind this visceral reaction by Jews and others, to Bibi and his fourth election as Prime Minister.  It’s about the antipathy of King Messiah Barack I, for Bibi.  If only the Israelis would elect a PM with better chemistry between him and Obama, then Obama would be a better friend of Israel.  And:  If only the Israelis would elect a PM who is not such an extremist, the world would respond better to Israel and her concerns.

          If what I’ve just said resonates with you, Dear Reader, and not for its irony but your actually seriously agreeing with what I’ve written…

          Please remember Intidafa II.  Do you?  It started in September 2000.  Supposedly as a reaction to Ariel Sharon’s visiting the Temple Mount.  I say supposedly, because rational observers saw it as a response to the Camp David talks hosted by Bill Clinton just a few weeks before, in July.  Remember those?  Then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in an attempt to jump-start stalled talks with Yassir Arafat, suggested a bold end plan where the Israelis would cede some 98% of the lands taken in the Six Day War to the Palestinians.  And he would even carve out of Israel proper, enough land to compensate for the remaining 2%!  But Arafat walked from the table, because the Palestinians’ goal never was to have a state in the lands outside the Green Line.  Their goal has always, blatantly been the destruction of the State of Israel.

          So I like Bibi.  Despite all his faults, he tells the truth as he sees it.  Even when that truth clashes with the narrative put forth by the leader of the world’s most powerful country.  If Bibi would go along with Obama’s deal with the Iranians, swallowing what he knows about one of the world’s most dangerous countries, he would be putting the State of Israel in grave and immediate danger.  Given this context, I think that Bibi’s accepting the invitation of Speaker of the House Boehner, becomes a gutsy gambit for an important cause, not a political folly as his detractors have charged.

          Bibi was recently accused of demagoguery for two things he said late in the recent election campaign.  First, he was accused of playing to the Extreme Right for declaring that he no longer advocates a Two State Solution.  Is this demagoguery, or simply a dose of reality?  His reasoning?  If a Palestinian State were to come into being today, given the political realities of the Palestinian National Council, it would most likely, swiftly become yet another failed state ruled by extreme jihadists.  I agree that that is not a comfortable thought.  Like fair-minded people all over, I feel bad for the implications this holds regarding the aspirations of the Palestinian Arab people.  But there is an undeniable element of reality in this pronouncement.  Demagoguery?  You be the judge…

          The second thing Bibi said that supposedly constituted demagoguery:  on social media he urged Jewish voters to get out and vote, since Arab Israelis were sure to vote in large numbers.  This, owing to the creation of a United Arab List.  This list was expected to energise Arab voters and bring them out in record numbers whilst it was feared that many Jews were tepid over these elections.  To Bibi’s detractors, this was not only demagoguery but also race-baiting, playing to Jewish Israelis’ basest fears regarding their Arab co-citizens.

          To this I say, Nonsense!  This is like President Obama’s apparatchiks exhorting Democrats to get off their duffs and vote, because of fears that Republican voters would defeat the President.  Well, Obama Incorporated did just that in 2012, and nobody accused him of demagoguery or race-baiting.  Because there was no reason to.  Democrat activists were simply doing their job – using the perceived differences between their guiding principles and those of the Republicans, to motivate their party to not sit out the election.

          In the case of the United Arab List, this coalition coopts the Islamists and the Communists.  And others not at all friendly to the vision of Israel likely to resonate with Likud voters.  Is this race-baiting, or just “vote or live with the consequences”?  In Israel unlike in Australia, it is not compulsory to vote.

          One more point to make.  The main opposition to the Likud, the Zionist Union, ran a campaign that sought to focus voters’ attention on domestic issues.  This, in contrast to the Likud which has always focused primarily on The Security Situation.  As a long-time Israel watcher, let me point out that the vast majority of Israelis, whilst they do worry about the economy and other issues, always vote as if there were only one issue…and it is not the price of new flats in North Tel Aviv.  So Bibi’s refusal to campaign on other issues does not represent an incompetence on his part to address those issues.  Nor does it represent a demagoguery on his part, to win the election because of fear.  It represents the reality that, when Israeli Jews vote, security is what they care about.  Except the Ultra-orthodox, for whom the Only Issue is how much the state will support their unique institutions whilst keeping their hands off of adult yeshiva students.  And none of those voters voted Likud…or Zionist Union.

          So, hurray for Bibi!  Is he the perfect Prime Minister?  Not by a long shot.  But Israelis have shown, by voting for him in huge numbers, that they agree with what he has to say.  And they resent the meddling of Obama, Incorporated in the internal politics of the sovereign State of Israel.  And the fact that the Israeli voters were willing to stand up to Obama, and stand with Bibi, is a good thing.  It reflects a growing maturity in Israeli politics.  Shabbat shalom.

No Rules - Just Right: A Drash for Vayakhel-Pekudei, 13 March 2015

There’s one activity that I particularly miss since we don’t have a permanently-set-up worship space.  It is welcoming school groups to visit, and explaining to them all the architectural features and furnishings in the shule.  I used to find it enjoyable the few times a year that such opportunities came up.  No, I don’t think that I ‘missed my calling’ by not becoming a museum docent!  But I sometimes downplay the importance of physical surroundings and objects and the tactile aspect of Judaism.  I’m more attracted to the contemplating, the ‘pondering’ part than to the tactile.  Now I know that what I’m saying may sound like an extreme disconnect to you who have been in our home.  After all, come into our living quarters, and you’ll find yourself surrounded with Jewish books and Jewish ‘stuff.’ But ‘touchable’ Judaism simply isn’t a big priority for me.  So I sometimes forget the importance of this aspect.

          Guiding groups of schoolchildren through the shule used to be my periodic reminder of this importance.  Even in the relatively utilitarian shules where I’ve served, the guests found the surroundings most fascinating and led them to ask probing questions that often went beyond the physical features of shule and furnishings.  And when that happened, the questions often went into the areas, about which I’m most concerned.  So there.

          I was thinking about this during the week, because of a project I’ve been working.  We’ve recently bought a Torah scroll.  It’s not a ‘real’ scroll:  on parchment and hand-written by a scribe.  But it’s usable.  For now, it’s the closest we’re going to get.  A kosher scroll today commands a five-figure price.  Even if someone were to give us a genuine scroll, I don’t have a secure place to keep it.  All this notwithstanding, I can tell that having, and using this simulated scroll has added immeasurably to our morning services.

          But we don’t have an Ark for the Torah.  So a few weeks ago, I spoke to a skilled carpenter.  Between us, we designed a mini-ark for our mini-Torah.  And now, I’m working on a white holy day cover for the Torah.  Pamela took care of the cloth for the mantle, and I made the design for the embroidery.  A professional embroiderer is going to decorate the mantle, then Pamela will finish crafting it.  And then there will be a parochet – a curtain – for the ark.  Actually two:  a dark blue one for everyday use, and a white one for festivals.  Slowly, slowly we are acquiring and amassing the various important symbols of Judaism to transform our worship space and make us feel that our space is fitting for our purposes.  To transform our meeting room or our living room into a space that ‘feels’ like a synagogue.  Things will only get better with time.

          It’s interesting that I was working on these tasks on the same week when we read the Torah portion Vayakhel.  Actually, this week we have a double portion – Vayakhel and Pekudei – but I’d like to focus on Vayakhel.

          A few weeks back when we were in Colorado, Clara and I saw the movie The Imitation Game.  It was a fascinating film about the breaking of the Nazis’ Enigma code by a team of cryptanalysts in Bletchley Park, England.  It was fascinating on a number of levels and I was disappointed that it won only one Oscar, for Best Screenplay.  To me the most interesting revelation was that the most sophisticated computer for breaking codes was useless until the master codebreaker, Alan Turing, realised that the team needed to help it.  They had to take into account elements both inside and outside the coded message to help in the decoding.  For example, the skilled intercept operator can determine a sender’s identity by recognising his ‘hand’ – his touch on the key when he sends in Morse code.  There are other methods of recognising an entity in communications.  Certain units come up at certain times.  And their messages are of similar lengths.  And the same subjects.  So by using this information that is external to the message text itself, we can glean a lot of intelligence that then helps us to break the code.  

I’ve long thought that the use of ‘externals’ in this way is important to ‘breaking the code’ and discerning deeper messages that the Torah has to tell us.  Remember how last week, I suggested that we pay close attention not only to the words of our Torah portion.  I showed how the juxtapositions – the flow of the text from one specific setting to another – matter.

          As this week’s parashah opens, we have – surprise of surprises! – one more admonition to observe Shabbat.  And then what follows in the next verses?  Instructions or the crafting of the Tabernacle, and in particular, the Ark.  So what are we to learn about this juxtaposition?

          Well, for one thing, we can begin to understand the importance of creating a setting for Shabbat.  If we make no transitions in our surroundings with the arrival of Shabbat, how can we expect to be able to really enjoy it?  I don’t mean that we have to have a special house for Shabbat, although that really isn’t such a bad idea.

          I have known Jews who had a ‘Shabbos house,’ because the shule was located in a suburb where they didn’t want to live full-time.  In this case, the Jews wanted to live in a suburb too far from the shule to walk to, and yet in their new area there was no shule that was suitable for them.  So they maintained a home in the old neighbourhood, near the shule, and every Friday afternoon they moved in, to move back to the newer home on Saturday evening.  To me it sounds like a lot of trouble, but it served their needs and carried an extra advantage.  I’m sure the deliberateness of changing houses just for Shabbat made it easier for them to really feel that Shabbat was special.

I’m like most of you:  not in the position of having a special house just for Shabbat.  But I have attended Shabbat retreats on several occasions.  And I can tell you that the act of uprooting yourself from your ‘normal’ surroundings and deliberately putting yourself into a different, and appropriate setting for Shabbat is constructive.  It does help you step away, not only from your everyday routines, but from your everyday cares and concerns.

We cannot retreat from our everyday surroundings every Shabbat.  But we can re-arrange our spaces to help engender the kind of spirit we want to create on Shabbat.  That’s why some Jews go out of their way to set a beautiful table with their best china on Friday evening.  And buy fresh flowers for the house.  And eat the best, richest food.  And put on their nicest suit of clothes.  All of this sets the mood; it makes Shabbat peace easier to realise.

This is an important assist.  Even if like me, you’re not one who focuses too sharply on the tactile.  As I have learned when I guided groups of schoolchildren through the various shules I’ve served.  As I came to realise this week, whilst very joyfully setting about the tasks of creating those tactile items to engender Shabbat peace.  And as we can all learn when reading this week’s portion, which jumps without transition from observance of Shabbat to the crafting of the Tabernacle and the Ark.

I’m talking specifically about Shabbat, but you can see how this applies to just about everything in life.  If we want to foster romantic feelings with our spouse on our wedding anniversary, we go to a nice restaurant or lay on the trappings at home.  If we want a business meeting to result in a contract, we see to the details of the meeting space and the atmosphere of the meeting.  If we want our children to excel in schoolwork, we help them create a study space where they can focus on the right things.  The principle applies universally.

To be able to create Shabbat peace solely from within, is a rare gift.  To be able to slow down even when nobody around us is doing so.  Even when the everyday noise still rages at full volume.  But most of us need help.  The instructions for the creation of the ancient Israelites’ Tabernacle no longer apply.  Therefore, the precise rules for the enterprise, given in this week’s Parashah, do not apply.  There are no rules…but there is still doing it right.  Right is what helps us to create our own Tabernacle of Peace.  So we pour our effort and creativity into it.  To do it right.  There isn’t an absolute right.  But in the right spirit.  Let that be the spirit that moves us as we work to create something special together.  Shabbat shalom.  

Rest…or Idolatry? A Drash for Parashat Ki Tissa, 6 March 2015

We know we’re supposed to observe Shabbat.  It’s a principle repeated so often in the Torah, that there is absolutely no ambiguity.  Shamor vezachor.  We keep the Sabbath day, and we remember it.  It is a memorial to the act of creation.  And also a memorial to the exodus from Egypt.  It is so central to Judaism, that a Judaism without its observance at the centre would be…in-authentic. 

What if I told you that I conceded there are too many distractions on Friday night and Saturday morning to ever bring more Jews to shule?  Having made that realisation, I was going to discontinue the Friday and Saturday services, and institute one on Sunday morning.  Sound outlandish?

Outlandish or not, it’s been done.  In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, some American Reform congregations did just this.  The rationale was as I stated above, and more.  In many places in the US, we had so-called Blue Laws that limited the ability of businesses to open on Sundays.  If Jews closed their businesses or did not do their marketing and errands on Saturdays, they would have been hard pressed to make a living or function.  In response, some Reform congregations moved their weekly service to Sundays, when Jews were available to truly rest.  To sit in shule, free of distractions.  To worship at the same time as their Christian neighbours, but in their own way.  Since they were at rest, and rest is what Shabbat is all about, the called Sunday…Shabbat.

Did this bring new strength to Judaism?  Only in a very limited sense.  It was novel, but it did not seem authentic.  Thus it faded into disuse.  One more footnote to the history of how Jews coped with the world in which they lived.  One more reason for the traditional to scoff at Reform.

But what if I declared the weekly service on Sunday yet didn’t in-authentically call it ‘Shabbat.’  According to Jewish law, there are three services on every day of the year.  Let’s meet on Sundays for the appropriate weekday prayer.  The same pragmatic goal as above, but dropping the pretense of being able to change the day of the Sabbath.  After all, many traditional congregations host ‘Tefillin clubs’ where members of their community do just that.  

I have a little experience to share in this area.  When I finished my assignment at the US Air Force Academy, an Orthodox rabbi replaced me.  The leadership did not assign him and his family to quarters within walking distance of the Cadet Chapel, so Shabbat became a dilemma for him.  This, in addition to the fact that the cadets are often busy on Friday evenings preparing for inspections on Saturday.  And on Saturday having those inspections as well as parades and mandatory sporting events.  So he decided to start a Sunday morning program at the chapel, including a weekday worship service.

The result was quite interesting.  Some in the community accused him of trying to ‘Christianise’ his program.  Let me be clear:  this was an Orthodox rabbi, and he was doing nothing inauthentic.  He was simply responding to a situation that he could not change, trying to create the best program he could for the Jewish cadets with the hand he’d been dealt.  The pushback was strong.  He threw up his hands in frustration, quit the Air Force, and went to live in Israel.

So, I don’t have to guess the result if I would schedule a morning worship service on Sunday morning and call it the principle gathering of the week.  The community would not respond positively.  We refuse to concede the fact that the Jewish week by necessity revolves around the observance of Shabbat.  But if so, why is it so difficult for so many Jews, to actually do the Sabbath? 

Part of the Shabbat dilemma can be explained by our being out-of-synch with the world around us.  The world for which Saturday is about shopping and errands, and all manner of activities by the groups and clubs to which you belong.  Doing Shabbat by definition, precludes us from participating in what everybody else around us is doing.  But this is definitely not the whole story.

I say this, because in Israel – a country whose rhythms are Jewish rhythms – Shabbat observance is not universal.  In Israel a generation ago, there were few distractions on Shabbat.  Today, there is more shopping and entertainment available.  Once, those working on Shabbat in Israel were mostly in emergency and essential services.  Visit Israel today, and you’ll find far more businesses open, more people working.  So life in exile, where the week does not revolve around Shabbat, does not fully explain the ‘problem’ of Shabbat.

I think that the full story is found in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tissa.  It is found in the juxtaposition of two important passages.  One is very familiar to us, because it is part of our Friday evening service every week.

Every week we sing with great gusto:  Veshamru venei Yisrael / et Hashabbat / La’asot et Hashabbat / ledorotam berit olam.  The people Israel shall keep the Sabbath, doing the Sabbath for all generations, an everlasting covenant.  We know these words.  They are found in the 31^st chapter of Exodus.

The other juxtaposed passage is in the 32^nd chapter of Exodus.  Its words aren’t as familiar to us, but its content is.  It is the passage of the Golden Calf.

Moses has been long coming down from the Mountain.  The people know that something momentous is going on up there.  They see the smoke and fire.  They hear the rumblings.  They certainly understand that Moses is in Hashem’s presence.  They fear that the one who led them out of Egypt, is being destroyed in his encounter with the Deity.  If so, that would leave Israel leaderless.  Like a rudderless ship, adrift on a stormy sea.  And that’s a frightening prospect.

So they take over.  The collect all the gold they can find, and they construct an idol.  A molten calf.  There in the wilderness, in the shadow of the mountain where Moses is going head-to-head with Hashem, they recreate one of the Egyptian cults and engaged in a ‘holy orgy’ in front of the god they created.

When we reflect on this passage, we don’t tend to see ourselves in it.  After all, we Jews are iconoclasts.  We avoid images and objects in trying to encounter the Holy.  We would not imagine worshipping a golden calf.

 But the golden calf itself is a distraction.  If we’re honest, we can imagine ultimately trusting in other things for our ultimate happiness.  Because we all do it.  Even when we enjoy the forms of Judaism, we have lost the proclivity to trust Hashem to show us the way to personal fulfillment.

So here’s the message I see in the juxtaposition of Shabbat, and the story of the golden calf.  Happiness and security in Hashem requires letting go of our sense of control.  The truth is that we’ve got very little in control of our lives.  All the time, we feel ourselves being carried along in inexorable tides not of our creation or choosing.  And yet we are free to choose, more than we are ready to acknowledge.  We simply don’t want to let go of the fiction of being in control.

So we ignore, or minimise Shabbat.  We tell ourselves that we have no choice.  In reality, we have other things we want to do.  And we often choose those other things.  We would never countenance a Judaism that turns away from Shabbat.  But we can personally choose whether to do it or not.

In all this idolatry, in all this thinking that we’re in control but in reality other forces are controlling us, we are ultimately not happy.  But Shabbat is not going to make us happy.  However, it will give us true rest, refreshment and peace of mind.  Yes, it’s only for a day.  But that day will, if we let it, give us what we need to go about our tasks for the rest of the week.  But that’s not all.

Shabbat is training for a holy life.  We force ourselves to obey Hashem long enough to do Shabbat, something that will bring us pleasure.  And that ‘trains’ us to answer the Divine Voice when it comes to things that are perhaps not pleasurable.  The things in life that we know we should do, even if they’re hard to do.  By keeping Shabbat, by answering Hashem’s imperative to stop the insanity for 24 hours, we are preparing ourselves to answer the imperatives that seem calculated to make our lives more difficult…but are not.

For a long time as a young rabbi, I wondered if we were somehow missing the boat by over-emphasising Shabbat observance and not focusing on the great moral principles the Torah teaches.  I’m not the only rabbi who has pondered this question.  But like most of the others, a lifetime of struggle keeps bringing me back to an irrefutable principle.  It is so well expressed by the author Asher Ginsberg, known by his nom de plume Ahad Ha’am:  “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.”

The sequential juxtaposition of the Sabbath, and idolatrous practice that is found in this week’s Torah portion, is no accident.  As Israel keeps the Sabbath, the Sabbath keeps Israel.  If you feel that Jewish life in general is a struggle, the best advice I can offer is:  first master Shabbat.