Walking the Thin Line: Elul 5773

 

“I, I Am the One that comforts you; who are you, to be afraid of man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be made as grass. . .?”

--Haftorah Shoftim, Isaiah 51:12

 

“Righteousness, righteousness shall you pursue . . .”

--Parashat Shoftim, Devarim 16:20

 

“Walking the thin line, between fear and the call; one learns to bend and finally depend on the Love of it all.”

--Noel Paul Stookey, For the Love of It All

The month of Elul started last Monday at sundown, on Rosh Chodesh, the sixth New Moon from the New Year for months.

My Elul dream this year came late, on Wednesday night, and without clarity or drama. In fact, I really don’t remember it at all, except that I dreamed of the current rabbi at our former synagogue, and of a neighbor in need of help finding a lost cat. I awoke to Tippy, my guardian Border Collie cross, pawing at my shoulder in the middle of the night. She feels it is important to awaken me when something unusual is going on. I went out to see an elk buck with eight points standing in the meadow in the deep darkness under a setting Big Dipper handle. Tippy did not bark at the elk this time; she seemed to think the elk belonged exactly in that place. She just wanted me to know he was there and awakened me to see him standing.

 

I don’t have a ready interpretation for the fragment of a dream or the meaning of seeing the elk standing in his place. Their significance escapes me, except that as I stood gazing at the elk in the starlight, I remembered that it was now Elul. 

This Shabbat, as the Engineering Geek and I sat down to study Torah, I was struck by two statements that jumped off the pages and into my mind, one from the beginning of the Parashat of the week, and one from its Haftorah. As I turned them over in my mind, I realized that the two of them together represent that place I have been for the last half-decade: I have been “walking the thin line between fear and the call” as Emmy Lou Harris sings in the Paul Stookey song, The Love of it All.

 

The Torah portion for the first Shabbat in Elul is Shoftim, which means “judges” or “chieftans” in Hebrew. In the first paragraph, which deals with how judgment must conform to justice, we read:

“You shall make for yourselves judges and officers in all your gates, which Adonai your G-d gives you, tribe by tribe; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment: you shall not pervert justice; you shall not respect persons; neither shall you take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the  eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land that Adonai your G-d is giving to you.”

 

צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדּף Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof

The call at the beginning of the Month of Elul—the beginning of the season of our turning, is to pursue justice or righteousness. In Hebrew, the words are the same. Justice means to make a judgment according to honor, standards or the law, meting out to every individual what is right according to his or her rights and actions. Our rabbis taught that there is the justice of the streets—the righteousness with which we must treat every person—and the justice of the courts. If we fail to act with justice in all of our dealings on the streets, then justice must be adjudicated in the courts. In his commentary on the Torah, Joseph Hertz, Ph.D., who was the Chief Rabbi of Britain in the early 20th century, points out that in this sense, the Hebrew understanding of justice differs from the Greek. He wrote that in the Greek, justice implies:

“[A] harmonious arrangement of society, by which every human peg is put into its appropriate hole, so that those who perform humble functions shall be content to perform them in due subservience to their betters. It stresses the inequalities of human nature, whereas in the Hebrew conception of justice, the equality is stressed.”

--Soncino Press Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary, J.H. Hersch, Ed., p. 821

This is the case because in Hebrew thought, every human being is made in the image of the Eternal, and his life is unique and precious, possessing, as he does, a spark of Infinity. Therefore, as Hersch continues, every person has “the right to life, honor and all the fruits of his labor,” (p. 821). For this reason, Jewish Law demands that every human being be treated with honor in the streets, and with righteousness in the courts.

But if the call of Elul is to justice, then the burden of answering it is fearful, as the prophets show us. For to behave with righteousness towards everyone in the streets and to mete out equal justice in the courts, flies in the face of social conventions and political correctness. One must honor truth, consider the facts, and render judgment accordingly in all dealings. One may not condemn the rich man because he is rich nor excuse the poor man because he is poor (“you shall not respect persons”), and one may not base how one treats another on gifts or flattery (“you shall not take a bribe”). For this reason, acting with righteousness and justice is likely to get a person in trouble socially and legally in an unjust society. And as we currently live in a society that no longer makes judgments based on righteousness and law, but does so on the exigencies of political correctness and the whims of men, acting with justice is a difficult and dangerous thing.

 

And herein lies how I, among others, have been “walking the thin line between fear and the call” as we recognize the truth of what is being done to our civil society and to its values and law. For in my determination—made every Rosh Hashanah for the past four years—to honor the truth and act righteously, I have said and done things that have earned me the anger and contempt of friends and acquaintances. Sadly, this has ended many friendships that were based on my former habit of ignoring the reality of growing differences between our worldviews. Some of the ways in which those friendships were ended, and the accusations leveled against me, have cut me to the core of my being.

 
And in my weaker moments, I am afraid that in stepping out beyond the lines of political correctness and social  and legal convention, I will be harmed not only socially, but financially and/or physically. Because making a stand for plain old justice in a world of collectivist notions of “social justice” is no longer simply bad form, but with the oppression of the surveillance state and the police state being created and solidifying with terrifying rapidity, it is downright dangerous. Speech and action that now can cost one her dignity, property and perhaps, her liberty, may soon cost one her life.


And that fear causes me temporary confusion and wrong action. It creates doubt in my mind and silence in my mouth. And so the Haftorah Shoftim, the fourth in the seven Haftorot of Comfort, also comforts me:

“I, I Am the One that comforts you; who are you to be afraid . . ?

“. . . And where is the fury of the oppressor? He that is bent down shall speedily be loosed; and he shall not go down dying into the pit. Neither shall his bread fail.”

I know that I am one small person. I know that I can err in knowledge, and that I have indeed done so, espousing bad causes and supporting bad means in the name of what seemed to me at the time to be good ends. Moreover, I have obstinately continued in bad courses because I did not have the courage to admit that I was confused, or lacking in knowledge, or that I was downright wrong. And in so doing, I have excused the guilty and harmed the innocent. Of this, I am not proud. 

But to paraphrase Julian of Norwich:

He did not say “You shall not screw up.” He did not say “You shall not be discouraged.” He did not say:\ “You shall not be harmed.” But he said: “You shall not be overcome.”

I suppose what that means is open to interpretation. To me, it means that trials and troubles, and even harm are not the worst thing. The worst thing is to lose one’s honor and integrity; to lose one’s identity and one’s very soul. And if I persist in finding righteousness and doing justice, turning and returning again to walk the thin line, then despite any shame or harm done to me, I will remain who I am, and that is the greatest value to me.

The name of the month of Elul is an acronym in Hebrew that stands for Ani l’dodi, v’dodi li—I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine. Elul is the point of turning and returning again in the dance of Shekinah, She who dwells with Israel in our exile, in our eternal betrothal with the Master of the Universe. And here, in my own dwelling place, Elul is the point of turning and returning again in my dance as a Jew, longing all my life for that moment of loving kindness, that betrothal of righteousness and justice, that Place, that shelter in the rock, where I get a glimpse of all of G-d’s goodness passing before me.

 

“For the Love of it all, I would go anywhere; to the ends of the earth, Oh, what is it worth, if Love would be there?

Walking the thin line, between fear and the call; one learns to bend and finally depend on the Love of it all.”

 

It is the love of it all—of life and being—that unites the call to justice and righteousness with the will to overcome fear and fills my heart with strength for the journey. And year after year, I turn and return again to the call in the dance of Elul. I come again to Makom, the Dwelling Place of Israel, only to know that I have been here, walking the thin line, day after day, year after year.

 

So. Maybe I can construct the meaning of Tippy’s silence as she brought me to see the elk. He was standing within his place, his Makom. And so am I, walking the thin line. Here, in this place between fear and the call, is Makom, the Presence of the Eternal. As Israel learned in her exile, as Isaiah reminds Jews to this day in the first Haftorah of Comfort:

הִנֵּה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

Hinei eloheichem

Here is your G-d.
 

Technorati Tags: Elul,Jewish Identity,Torah Study,T'shuvah

Pesach: This Kept Us Standing

 

“And this Covenant is what kept our ancestors standing, and ourselves as well: That in every generation more than one enemy has arisen against us, to annihilate us, but the Covenant of the Holy One has stood and delivered us from their hands.”

--Vehi Sheamda, Hagaddah shel Pesach

“Rashi comments that this declaration of Vehi Sheamda is the reiteration of the promise that Ha-Shem made to Avraham of "V'gam as hagoi asher ya'avdu, dan anochi..." The nation that enslaves you will also be judged by Me..." This promise, which has stood for our forefathers, stands for us as well. Anyone who comes upon us, Ha-Shem judges them and saves us from their hands.” 

--R. Yehuda Prero, The Passover Hagaddah Commentary Part I: Maggid (torah.org)

Passover time seems to take me by surprise when it comes early in the solar year. This year, it begins this Monday evening, March 25, and getting myself motivated to do the cleaning, get the chametz out, and turn the kitchen over has been difficult. With everything that is going on in our lives right now, I kept hearing that voice in my head saying: “I don’t want to do it this year. This year, I think I’ll skip it. After all, how important is that I, a little person, observe all the rituals and complete the slaving cleaning for Pesach. Surely, the Universe will not be disturbed by my decision not to participate.”

 

And then a friend sent me this beautiful rendition of Vehi Sheamda with commentary by the chief rabbi of South Africa:

 

And when I saw the translation given for the first line of the Vehi Sheamda: “And this COVENANT is what kept our ancestors standing, and ourselves . . .” I got it. Of course it matters that I clean and remove the chametz from our little house, here on the edge of the Mogollon Rim, far from the centers of power in the world.

From the point of view of those who hate us, who denigrate the beautiful heritage of Torah, it does not matter what I do. In fact, they would rather that I did nothing. They would rather that I, that we, forget the Covenant and disappear like all the other nations, becoming a footnote to a footnote in the reaches of history.

“For in every generation, more than one enemy has arisen to destroy us.” This statement is undeniably true. Never in our long and tumultuous history, have the Jewish people been ignored and been allowed to freely exercise the observance of our Covenant unopposed. Although America has become home and our greatest sanctuary, it is uncertain at best, given the hatred directed at the Land of Free and the Home of Brave, and at those of us among her people who are Jews.

And yet we persist. Out of sheer cussed stubbornness, we insist on going on existing despite the depredations of our enemies. And why do we persist? That is a miracle of the most Hebrew kind. For no natural laws have been suspended for us, and many of Jews have gone up in smoke, or have had rockets rain down upon their heads in their own lands, or have been forced from their homes in Egypt, in Yemen, in Iran—from those days at this season, to this day when we live under the threat of being bombed back to the stone age by mullahs from the stone age.

But the signs and wonders are there, and the evidence of the mighty hand of the Eternal, for those with eyes to see them. Unlike Moses, most of the world has no patience to sit and watch a bush aflame until they can see that it is not consumed. And so most human beings miss the signs and wonders that they walk past every day.

Among them, is this sign. Once again, all over the world, Jewish women retrieve the mops and brooms, fill their pails with water, and begin the ancient ritual of clearing out the chametz—the leaven—from their homes. We kneel down to sweep it away with a feather, and our men take it to burn it on the eve of Pesach. All of us, every year, are enacting the journey from slavery to freedom, from the worship of idols to the service of the Covenant, from Jerusalem destroyed to Jerusalem rebuilt.

In these humble actions, unnoticeable and unnoted, we renew for ourselves the Covenant that began when we came forth from slavery, into freedom. Passover, like all other Jewish holidays, is a reminded of the Covenant. But Passover is also the story of how we came to be who we are, Am ha-Brit, the People of the Covenant.

“But the Covenant of the Holy One has stood and delivered us from their hands.” The sign and the wonder is not something that is shown to us as we continue to survive and thrive despite the wish of the most recent of our enemies to “wipe us off the map” of the world. Rather, the sign and the wonder is us, ourselves, keeping the Covenant. We have been taught that if even a remnant of Israel keeps the Covenant, that will be the salvation of us all. And for us, salvation is not some promise of life after death, rather it is the continuation of our people. Salvation is effected in our stubborn insistence that: Od Avinu Chai! Am Yisrael Chai! Our father yet lives! The People Israel lives!

“For as much as we keep the Covenant, the Covenant keeps us.” (Machzor). As Jews, as that obstinate Remnant of Israel, that goes on surviving when most of the world would rather we were dead, the meticulous observation of the laws of Pesach, and the arcane rituals from another time are a touchstone that reminds us who we are. On the surface, I am an ordinary ranch wife, an American woman living in the rump end of flyover country, a human being among millions, whose life and death will be little known and little noticed. But when I kneel down to sweep the chametz off the hearth, I am also a daughter of the Covenant, a child of Abraham and Sarah, a companion of Moses and Miriam. I am free woman, brought forth from slavery, with signs and wonders, awesome power, a mighty arm and outstretched hand. My liberty matters.

And what I do about that matters. It matters because it preserves an identity that has existed from Sinai until now, an eternal braid of ritual and remembrance, giving my actions a meaning and reality that transcends my place and time. And so, despite the whispers of the destroyers who have dogged our steps from Egypt until now, and despite the momentary whisper of not wanting to begin, I retrieved my mop and broom, filled my pail with water, and began to clean my house, remove the chametz, and tomorrow after Shabbat, I will turn over the kitchen for Pesach.

“For in every generation, each one is obligated to regard herself as having personally come forth from Egypt . . .”

It was not easy to come forth from the house of slavery, the fleshpots of Egypt. But some things are worth fighting for. Our existence and our identity as a people nurtured on freedom comes from this Covenant.
“And THIS COVENANT is what keeps us standing . . .”

 

Technorati Tags: Times and Seasons,Passover,Jewish Identity

 

Shabbat Shuvah: The Foreign Gods of Today

Technorati Tags: Times and Seasons,High Holy Days,American Exceptionalism,Torah Study

“The Eternal said to Moses:

You are about to sleep with your fathers,

and this people will rise up and go astray

after foreign gods, where they will go to be

among them, and break my Covenant . . .

and many troubles and evils shall befall them.”

Devarim 31: 16, 17

As Jews, we are now in the midst of the Ten Days of Turning, the days between Rosh Hashanah, when we celebrate the Birthday of the World, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most solemn holy day of the year. The Sabbath that falls between these two holy days is Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath on which rabbis and maggids (preachers) commonly give a sermon on the art of turning and returning to the path of righteousness.

When the Engineering Geek and I took a few moments for Torah Study on Shabbat, with all of what had happened in the past weeks in mind, we noticed a part of Parashat Vayelich that the Women of Reform Judaism’s Torah Commentary remained silent about. Devarim  (Deuteronomy) is set as Moses’ last speech, with some interpolations that move the story along. In Vayelich (He Went), Moses learns that he has reached the end of his long life, and that he will die before the people Israel enter the promised land. The Women’s Commentary therefore focuses on what this means for Moses, and the reasons given and implied for his death at the moment of his people’s freedom.

But given the stark choices that confront us all in the world today, and the contradictory and craven behavior of our Executive  Branch in the face of the renewed attacks on the United States through our embassies--attacks used to threaten our most basic freedoms--the Engineering Geek and I focused on the passage that the commentary passed over. In it, a prediction is made by the Eternal. The people will cross over, and they will build lives in the land, and become complacent (“. . . they shall have eaten their fill and waxed fat. . .”, 31:20), and that is when they will be vulnerable to turning away from their heritage and their purpose, and follow after foreign gods that they have not experienced. When this happens they will, the story predicts, forsake the Covenant, and bring upon themselves many “troubles and evils.”

In encountering this story, we ask ourselves, what are foreign gods in the context of our identity as Americans today? Most of us do not literally bow down to idols of wood and stone made by our own hands. And many of us bow down to no gods at all. Further, this passage is about what happens when many members of a society make a choice to change their basic beliefs about their civil identity, and forsake the heritage given them by previous generations.

In Hebrew, the United States is known as Artzot ha-Brit shel Amerika, ( ארצות הברית של אמריקה) the Land of the Covenant in America. This is a recognition that our unique identity is forged not by blood ties, but that who we are is based on our choice to abide by a set of ideas that are protected by an contract, the Constitution of the United States.

On September 11, 2001, many of us were rudely made aware for the first time in a generation that our ideas about who human beings are and what we define as the good life in our civilization were under attack; that another set of ideas opposes ours, and that proponents of those alien ideas are willing to make war upon us, and to fight and die to see that their ideas prevail in the world. On that day, as the towers fell, we instinctively drew together, and the day after, we put up our flags and remembered that we were Americans.

As the EG and I talked about all this, we realized that we Americans had grown complacent indeed, and that we have been in the process of forsaking our Covenant of respect for individual rights, thereby giving up cherishing the uniqueness of each individual, and had begun to turn away toward concepts foreign to our native values. This hankering after dependency and collectivism, the easing of responsibility and individual liberty, was possible because we forgot the origin of the wealth and innovation that made our comfort and ease possible. In so doing, we were turning to foreign gods, ideas that are in opposition to our Covenant, and cannot possible co-exist with it.

Islamic thought, with its focus on totalitarian submission to a theocratic state, has developed from premises alien to our enlightenment values, and is driven by a civilization that is not at all complacent or passive. Islamic teaching emphasizes the necessity of bringing the whole world into submission to ideas that are incompatible with our own. Our Western forbearers have resisted these idols before, at Tours with Charles Martel, and twice at the Gates of Vienna. 

But now, with our Covenant weakened by dreams of collectivist utopias, we see our leaders actively chasing after alien ideas, appeasing our enemies with apologies, and proclaiming a willingness to surrender our basic rights to foreign gods. We must rethink our liberties, they say, in the face of the Ba’al of the Riot and the Mob. It is our children whose birthright of freedom is to be sacrificed to satisfy the insatiable fires of the barbarian hordes.

And yet, there are those among us who have sounded the alarm that there can be no compromise with those who wish to supplant our values with their own, and no surrender without the total loss of our American identity. Like the prophet in the Haftarah for Shabbat Shuvah, they tell us:

“Asshur shall not save us . . .neither will we call anymore the work of our hands our gods . . .”

“Give not your heritage up to reproach, that the nations should make you a byword; Should they say among the peoples: Where is their G-d?”

We cannot make treaties with the alien thought of Egypt and Libya and at the same time retain our own unique identity. Foreign ideas and values cannot be assimilated without destroying our own. Oil and water do not mix, and nobody can compromise with poison and live.
It is one or the other, and we must not listen to those who would so lightly surrender our liberty, our values and principles to those who would destroy us. 

It is amazing how the struggles of old, couched in religious language, are relevant still, and tell the same stories that we experience, although we tell of them differently. 
Just as Israel of old had to choose or be broken on the contradiction between her identity and that of the idols, the same is true for us today. We must choose rightly or be broken on the contradiction between our own values and those of Egypt and Libya and the whole of the Muslim Brotherhood with its Islamist nightmare. Liberty and submission cannot be combined. Individual rights will not co-exist with the Ummah, the collective nation of the Islamic State. 

It is my hope that in this season of turning we gather the courage to say what is real, and  to acknowledge the truth in our hearts. And that we do not close our eyes to the troubles and evils that are about to befall us, and that we recognize that they are a consequence of the fact that we are in the act of forsaking our Covenant, the one that has made us the envy of the world and an inspiration to among the nations.

We need to wake up and to recognize how greatly we have prospered by the values and principles bequeathed to us by our founders, so that we can preserve our liberties and bequeath our inheritance—the Covenant of Rights and Liberties—to our posterity.

This remains my hope in the face of growing darkness.

Like Losing My Religion

Technorati Tags: Change,Judaism,Times and Seasons,Values

That was just a dream . . .
That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spot. light. I’m losing my religion . . .

REM, Low(Bootleg) Album            

A few days ago, I awoke from a dream to find myself here at the ranch, sun pouring across the mesa outside my window and finch traffic at the birdbath. The dream was one of those weird ones that signal the changes of seasons and even deeper changes in me. And as I sat up in bed, feeling not quite awake yet, I thought: It must be Elul. I have these numinous dreams rarely, and when I do it is at this time and this season.

In this dream, there were no transitions, just sudden change of scenes, as if I had been dropped into the middle of filming an ongoing movie. There are two parts I remember quite vividly, and the rest is a blur of impressions that faded immediately upon my awakening.

First, I am suddenly inside our synagogue, in the social hall, floating among people, and I realize that I don’t know a single soul among them, and then I see that their faces are all the same.
Later, I am in the parking lot, down on the level of the pavement, and I  was looking at  two outdated jeeps parked against the wall, one listing away from the other, and both sitting on their frames, no tires. The plates are tagged with dates in the 5750’s. I reach out to touch the jeep on the right, and instead find myself placing my open hand on a pile of clothes. I know that I need to pick them up, take them inside, because somebody there has need of them. As I lift each article, I notice that one item belonged to me once, a red skirt I wore at my Bat Mitzvah, and I fold it up because it doesn’t fit me anymore. . .

That morning as we had our morning coffee in bed, I turned to the Engineering Geek and told him that it was the first of Elul and that we had to think seriously about the upcoming Holy Days, and make some decisions. He nodded. He knew. We’ve been putting it off for a long time. I said that there are two issues, and I think need to be considered separately. The easiest is the issue of dues. The hardest is whether we should end our membership altogether and what we should do for the Holy Days.

The EG nodded. He said that we cannot afford the dues we are expected to pay. This is a problem we had thought we resolved in March of last year, three months after the EG retired from Sandia. We made a personal visit with administrator there to put our dues in abeyance until we could see how long it would take us to begin bringing in money with our businesses, and what it would be like to live on the pension and our investments out here at Freedom Ridge. But despite the arrangement, the synagogue kept sending bills for the amount we paid before, and at membership renewal, they continued our membership at the old rate. They have a policy, I have been told, that if members do not renew and do not formally resign, we are continued at the previous rate. I don’t know what happened to our arrangements in labyrinthine depths of the computers where such transactions are preserved,  but I think it would be fairly easy to get this resolved.

Before we resolve it, though, we have to decide the hard question: should we continue membership? Even to consider this is almost like losing my religion, like relinquishing that which reconnects me again and again to my own past, our past and that of the people Israel who gather, learn and pray in that place.

All of my adult life I have been a member of this synagogue. My children had all of their life-cycle ceremonies there:  her naming, his brit milah,  their consecrations, bat and bar mitzvah, and confirmations. At that bimah, I was called to Torah for the first time as an adult bat mitzvah. Under the chuppah there, I was married to the Engineering Geek. From that sanctuary, I had expected to be taken to my final rest in the Congregation Albert Cemetery. There, I have celebrated the festivals, observed the fasts, heard the sound of the Shofar, welcomed the Sabbath Bride.

And yet, much of the connection has been slipping away of itself, as the Reform movement has become less about religion—the reconnection of people with the longings of their souls—and more about politics. When did Reform Judaism lose the prophetic voice of ethical monotheism for ritual without reason? When did it substitute “social justice” for G-d’s demand to choose life and reject death, made directly from the Mountain alive with smoke and fire, the Bat Kol resonating down through the centuries and into each of us, penetrating to our very bones? When did it replace the call of our Rabbis* to learn and understand and choose what is good with dictates from the Religious Action Center, replacing the majesty of Law with social-democratic political policy?

*The capital “R” denotes the Tanaim and Amoraim, the founders of Rabbinic Judaism whose discussions and arguments became the Talmud, the teaching and conversation across time that kept the flame alive throughout all the years and centuries of exile and pogrom, crusades and holocaust.

For a long while, beginning with our dissatisfaction with our last rabbi and his use of a Yom Kippur Sermon to stump for Obamacare, we have wondered if we were losing our religion. We also recognized that giving our hard-earned money to a Jewish institution that idolizes a president, and advocates spending our children’s inheritance to institute a collectivist utopia in place of our liberty is immoral, and is tantamount to funding our own destruction.

Part of the purpose of putting our dues in abeyance was also to wait and see. At the time, we had an interim rabbi whom we found to be a spiritual leader; one who respected the difference and the boundary between Jewish law and transient political policy, and who understood that his job was to provide guidance for walking the Jewish way to all of us. But we knew that we were getting a new rabbi and we had no idea how he would be.

We have now met the new rabbi and we find him distant and not terribly interested in talking to us. Perhaps this is unfair, because with our move to Freedom Ridge, we aren’t there often, although we have made an effort to be present when we are in Albuquerque. I do not expect hugs or effusive greetings, but warmth and small talk would be nice. Even a friendly wave and greeting would be welcome. But the man seems cold toward us, and I cannot help but take it personally. I was hoping that the man who takes responsibility for our Jewish needs and ceremonies would be, well, at least a bit simpatico.

I thought perhaps I ought to make the first reach, so I “friended” him on Facebook. And there I discovered that we had gotten another “social action” rabbi. I have seen very slanted posts there, ones that demonstrated the less than tolerant and charitable “Vision of the Anointed”  of the left. The first one condemned the Susan G. Komen Foundation in lockstep with the leftist attack on that private charity because of an innocent decision about the best use of funds by its founder and board. The second accused the people of Colorado Springs of hypocrisy because many of them are conservative and support cutting the federal budget and taxes and yet their local and state governments requested federal disaster funds for them.

There are political arguments for why the good rabbi is wrong in both cases, but I did not use them. I  did make comments expressing my concern that these posts betrayed a one-sided view that was uncharitable in the extreme, and that placed ideology over individuals. I remain dismayed at this rabbi’s lack of discernment, jumping on two leftist propaganda bandwagons as he did, without apparent thought and with some malice. This makes me uncomfortable at the thought that this man is the one I am paying to be on call for me should we have a family tragedy or even a simcha, in order to provide us with the Jewish rites and comfort that accompany such events. It is not that we disagree with one another politically, so much as the way in which he has made blanket condemnations without much depth about people whom he does not even know, because of his attachment to his political ideology. I would be one of those people.

There are other issues and events, things that have happened very recently and over a longer period of time that make me feel that we may be formally members, but we really don’t belong at this synagogue. Ten years ago, I leyned Torah several times a year, something I love to do. I have not leyned once since Cantor Jacquie left, and we have not been honored with a call to Torah either, even this year, when we celebrated our 10th anniversary. Recently, my brother-in-law and my son’s uncle died suddenly and tragically, and although we informed the synagogue, and we drove almost two hundred miles to say kaddish, his name was omitted from the list.

I have written before about my discomfort with some of the ways in which our ways of thinking and being do not mesh with the prevailing climate of this synagogue, and I suppose that sooner or later it had to come to a decision point. And yet it is not an easy one, as obvious as the misfit of our square pegs and their round holes may be.

We have talked about it, the Engineering Geek and I, and although he feels it less deeply, he is much more vocal about the immorality of continuing to support a synagogue where he has to walk out of the political sermons year after year. He tends to joke about it, but as money becomes more scarce—like most ranchers our wealth is not liquid—he says he doesn’t want to throw away the good after the “socialist” bad money.

We have made no final decisions. But we have given ourselves two options for the Holy Days, neither of which will be to attend services at Congregation Albert. We may pray at home for one or both of the High Holy Days. We may visit a small, egalitarian synagogue in Flagstaff. Although it is affiliated with the Reform Movement, its size and location mean that it draws Jews from many different Jewish backgrounds. Also, the rabbi did not study at Hebrew Union College (the seminary of the Reform movement), and therefore may be less indoctrinated in the current political “religion” ideology that seems to emanate from it. We would like to find out. Although neither of us are particularly touchy-feely types, we can tolerate that so long as the focus is Judaism in all its history and grandeur, and is not wasted in the weeds of ephemeral political dogmas and doctrines.

I know that if I never belong to or never darken the doors of another synagogue, I will remain a Jew in culture and commitment. I will never bow down to idols, be they made of stone or ideology. I will always see the world through the Jewish eyes I developed through all these years at Congregation Albert. But even the small steps that we have made away from a congregation in which I have experienced all of the joys, sorrows and frustrations of being a Jew cause me to feel like I am losing my religion. 

Purim: The Diaspora Mentality

 

“It can’t happen here.”  

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations so that the name of Israel will not be remembered.”

Psalm 83  

“So many Hamans, only one Purim.”

 

Once again Purim is upon us, a time of spring-fever hilarity and drunken silliness. The only holiday of the Jewish calendar when it is not only permitted, but practically commanded that we drink enough so that we do not know the difference between Mordecai, the hero, and Haman, the villain. And what’s not to celebrate? On the surface, Purim is another one of the quintessential Jewish holidays that can be summarized thus:
They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat.     

But scratch below the surface of the formula, and look again. Purim is antithetical to the joy of Pesach, when we rejoice in our liberation from slavery, and our obligation in every generation to understand that it was we, ourselves, who came forth from Egypt. Rather, Purim is more than slightly hysterical, as we read the Megillah and remember that in the Diaspora, the Eternal G-d of Israel is silent, hidden even in the face of our total annihilation.  Even the circumstance of our peril in Shushan was governed by the capriciousness associated with the false gods of the nations, the date of our destruction—13 Adar—being chosen by the casting of lots, called purim.  And the villains do not have the solemn power of a Pharaoh and his priests, ready to duel, gods against G-d, over the fate of Israel. A drunken king willing to mortgage away his kingdom for the price of a half-year long drinking party and his vain chancellor who struts and fusses his way to the destruction of the Jews of Persia; that’s what we get in this Diaspora tale of precarious redemption. And even that is not accomplished by the strong hand and mighty arm of the Eternal, full of power and glory. No, in our Diaspora redemption, the King is too weak to even rescind the death decree, but the Jews of Persia are granted a special dispensation to defend themselves against those commanded to destroy them.  

Purim is very much a Diaspora tale, and in the Megillah itself we see all of the stereotypical manifestations of what R. Soloveitchik calls “the galut (exile) mentality.” The tale could be pulled right out of a newspaper from Europe today, or any other place and time in which a highly assimilated and comfortable Diaspora Jewish community is suddenly made aware of how small, vulnerable and hated it really is.

Even the heroes are Diaspora heroes. When Hadassah is entered into the “Miss Shushan” contest to get the king a new queen, she goes with a less “Jewish”name, Esther, which means “hidden.” Her uncle, the Court Jew Mordecai, counsels her not to reveal her identity, so that she remains hidden in the court of the King. The attitude of the Jews of Shushan is also typically that of assimilated Jews of the Diaspora. As R. Irving Greenberg puts it, when Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman in the street:

“. . . they were confident they had nothing to do with ‘Mordecai the Jew’ types who would not go along with Persian rules. It was a rude awakening to discover that Haman designated all Jews as his target. Even more shocking was the discovery that the respectable [King] Ahashverosh, who would never kill Jews—some of his best friends were Jews—passed the ring to Haman without hesitation and was ready to stand by indifferently while the mass murder proceeded. The Jews of Shushan discovered the bitter lessons of the Diaspora: It can happen here, and we are one. (The Jewish Way).

When the destruction of the Jews of Shushan is announced, Esther and Mordecai’s responses are echoed down through the whole sorry history of Diaspora Jewry. Mordecai weeps, Esther decides that it is better not to stand out (“Shah! Be shtill!”), and the Jewish community is divided on the seriousness of the peril (“They don’t really mean it.” “This is the land of Schiller and Bach.”) It is only when Mordecai takes action, sending a message to Esther in which he says:

“Do not think that you alone of all the Jews, will escape into the King’s house; for if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another place, and you and your father’s household will be destroyed. Who knows but that you have come into the King’s Household for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4: 13 – 14)

And so Esther does act, and deliverance comes because of her action. But her actions are not the confident and direct acts of a prophet like Moses, but the careful and hesitant self-abasement of a court Jew in the uncertainty of exile:

“If I have found favor in your eyes, O King, and if it pleases the King, let my life be given to me at my request and my people spared at my pleading . . . If only we had been sold to be slaves, I would have been silent for merely suffering bondage, I would not have wanted to cause damage to my king . . .” (Esther 7:3 – 4).

The hysterical hilarity of Purim is a celebration of the momentary relief of a people who know that evil has been averted but not destroyed; that the wheel is still in spin. Haman hangs today, and the Jews are saved, but tomorrow there could arise another son of Amalek--who embodies the pure, destructive will to annihilate the Jewish people—and genocide come upon them like a bolt out of the blue.

This Purim, as I drown out the name of Haman with a swing of the grogger, and eat my Hamantaschen accompanied by a nice Moscato, I also remember this about Amalek: he is the symbol of idolatry, the claim to an absolute power that is contradicted by the very existence of the Jew. As R. Greenberg puts it:

“Premature messianists. . . are angered by the persistence of the Jew who thereby gives the lie to their presumptions. Idolatry is tempted to make the Jew disappear and thereby clear the way for its own, uncontested dominance. The twentieth century has made the matter even clearer. Whosoever would be God must destroy the Jews totally. As long as one Jew is alive, the Jewish denial of all but God remains . . . the temptation to become God is overwhelming, therefore a plan to murder every last Jew becomes conceivable—and doable.” (The Jewish Way).

And I think about the rising unrest in the world, and the empty promises of Utopia that come from the right, the left, the Islamists, the trade unions, the political personality cultists, the Occupy movement and the idolater in the White House who said: “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” Is it no wonder, then, that we are seeing a rise in Jew-hatred all over the world, from Achmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map, to the Occupy Los Angeles teacher who wants all Jews expelled from the United States. SSDD.

And the Jews of the United States, confronted with a maniacal hatred of ourselves and our country, act just like the Jews of Shushan. So many liberal Jews refuse to see Obama’s hatred of Jews and Israel. So many libertarian Jews help Ron Paul sweep the overt anti-Semitism in his campaign under the rug. Jewish self-hatred abounds in the press, in the media. It is hard to understand. It seems crazy. It seems suicidal. It is irrational.

“Do not think that you alone of the Jews will escape into the King’s house—(the party, the movement, the collective) . . .

Utopia is an idol; beautiful at a distance, but corrupt and deadly close-up. And no matter how much the individual Jew might protest and argue that it is not he who contradicts assimilation, the collective, the perfection of human kind, Amalek sees his very existence as a threat, saying:

 

“Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations . . .”

So many Hamans. Only one Purim.

Elul 5771: Renewing Our Days at Freedom Ridge Ranch

The Jewish year 5771 has been a year of changes. This has been reflected in my blog, in my daily life and in our family's approach to Jewish life. Last year, I completely missed writing a post about Elul at all, and the posts about our Jewish holidays have been short or entirely missing. Although we did celebrate them, our celebrations were different--especially in the springtime of the year, when we were caught up in the most protracted move I have ever made, complicated as it was by the Engineering Geek's retirement, surgery and frequent travel. However, this summer--as we got settled here on the ranch--we began some practices for our Jewish life way out here, far from any organized form of communal life.

Change, even good change, even planned change, is hard. It is endings and beginnings. For me, starting a business, investing in that business, buying property, moving out of a house I loved, learning, learning, learning--sometimes the hard way--all of these things create a lot of emotional stress. For the EG, retiring from a career at the National Labs, a work environment that was becoming increasingly bureaucratic and difficult to fit himself into, leaving the work itself--which he loved, learning how to organize his own work, forming his own Engineering firm and dealing with the financial changes this all entailed created stress that matched and exceeded mine. For the CIT, making the decision to move to a new school in mid-year, making that move, meeting new people, adjusting to small-town life, planning for life after high school, and taking a great deal of responsibility for animals and the infrastructure of the ranch, all made for his own adjustments.

The confluence of all of these individual changes definitely put great stress on each set of individual relationships--husband to wife, wife to husband; mother to son, son to mother; step-father to step-son, step-son to stepfather--and there was a great deal of family turmoil as all of these relationships had to be negotiated anew. For not only are the parents transitioning to a new phase of life--retirement, new work and new plans, but so is the boy becoming a man, planning his next moves, working out how to be up and out and yet remaining attached to the ranch, work that he wishes to inherit.

And of course, there is also everything that is happening in the outside world, a world that is becoming increasingly unstable as it approaches a Crisis period, the Fourth Turning of the Saeculum. Increasing financial stress upon our country, and the crash of economies in other countries; the increasingly dire realization that--like it or not--there is an implacable enemy out there that threatens our country and our world; and for us, the rise of the oldest hatred, the virulent antisemitism, expressed this time through a threat to the very existence of Medinat Yisrael--the Jewish State.

As the world labors to enter a new cycle of seasons, as the generations enter new phases of their own lives, and as we make huge changes, we have found the need to establish new ways of reconnection to our heritage and our religion. All these stresses, coming together as they are, require a strong central anchor, a place of coherence, in order for us to generate the faith in life and in ourselves so that we can weather what is coming with strength of spirit.

So as the physical requirements of the move receded into the past, and as spring became summer and the emotional turmoil began to manifest, we knew we had to establish a different kind of Jewish life. At one point in June, when the smoke hung in the air and the rumors of evacuation were upon us, we knew it was going to be divorce, murder or a positive evolution to our marriage. At this time, when it looked like we weren't going to survive ourselves, we happened to unpack our Ketubah--our marriage contract. And we read the contract we had made: to establish a household within the People Israel, and to nurture our lives through the cycles of Sabbaths and Holy Days.

So we began to turn again, a little earlier than Elul, or our Elul began a little before it begins formally. We are not certain which is true. So we each established for ourselves our own person ritual of prayer and study, more of less formal as we each felt we needed. As a family, we have always observed the Sabbath together, but during this past year it had become disorganized and perfunctory. Into this latent framework we breathed new life, making it a point to appreciate each other through the formal ritual of the Friday night Shabbat ritual. To this we added a casual, communal service on Shabbat morning, including Torah Study. As it has been summer, we have been praying this service together on the porch, developing our own minhag (custom) about who leads and who responds during the different prayers.
And then before we eat lunch, we make Shabbat morning Kiddush. And in the evening when three stars appear, we make Havdalah.

As always, I am amazed at the truth of the saying about Torah from Pirke Avot: "Turn it, and turn it, for everything is in it." Each week, the portion says something to us about the things we have been pondering, or about what is happening in the world. Soon we will celebrate Sukkot, our first here at the ranch, and this phenomenon of the eternal relevance of Torah to our lives and the life of the world is stated in the readings from Kohelet (Ecclesiastes): There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to events created out of the relationships of person to person and community to community.

There is nothing set in stone about this routine we are establishing. We still have to travel to Albuquerque to care for our house, to take care of other business, and to fulfill appointments. When we do, our comings and goings do not always go as planned. And so, when we are there instead of here, we reconnect with our now far-away Jewish community by attending Friday night services, and then having a more simple ritual at home.

There can be, we have discovered, Jewish life when one lives 30 miles from nowhere, and 200 miles from the nearest synagogue. The bands of connection to ritual life and community have to become elastic, and the ways that we relate to it must change. At the same time, we are learning that in some ways, those connections become more necessary and more important.

I have learned again that Jewish life changes with the lifecycle, that the cycle of the year and the circle of one's life are wheels within wheels, ever turning, bringing us back always to that stable and necessary center.

Blessed is the One who renews our days as in days of old.

Restoring Courage: Glenn Beck's Moment

בְּיָדוֹ אַפְקִיד רוּחִי
בְּעֵת אִישָׁן וְאָעִירָה
וְעִם רוּחִי גְוִיָּתִי
אֲדֹנָי לִי וְלֹא אִירָא
Into G-d's hand, I commit my spirit,
When I sleep, and I shall awake;
And with my spirit, my body.
G-d is with me, I shall not fear.
--Adon Olam

Israel is under attack.
The Jewish people are once again threatened by destruction.
Who among the nations will speak up for us?

This is not a novel statement.
In certain circles such a statement would inspire the response:
"Ya think?" It would be said with a certain sarcastic, world-weary tone intended to impress the listener with the speaker's oh, so sophisticated approach to events. No doubt the responder has a different and more self-flattering view of what sophistication is than the actual meaning, derived from the practice of the ancient Greek sophists to teach a rhetoric in which the Socratic rules of logic may be used to argue contradictory sides of an argument one after another. Sophistry was a method of teaching used to inculcate in the young elite the skills needed to be a successful politician in the Athenian democracy. In the right hands, such skills could be useful in order to create a platform from which a politician could discuss ideas, but more often to be sophisticated in the root sense meant using the skills to manipulate voters in order to obtain power over them.

Israel is under attack.
This is not novel, but it is true.
Israel's very right to exist is being questioned and delegitimized. No other country on the face of the earth has had its right to exist challenged this way, no matter how cruel its government is to its own people, no matter how belligerent it is toward other countries, no matter how it was created.

The sophists find reasons why it is good and right and just to allow such talk. The cynics say that Israel is evil and that the West is too mired in its own sin to do anything about it.

And into the breech steps an earnest and idealistic American Christian who is somewhat ignorant of Judaism and even more so about Jews ourselves. Like many American Christians, he does not understand our fears and foibles, our prickly response to those who are not MOT*s and yet who seem to like us anyway. Last week in Jerusalem, the radio host and commentator Glenn Beck held a rally in support of the Jewish people and of Israel. He called it Restoring Courage. He explained that just as the people of a small town in Ohio who had banded together to help one another in the face of the worst unemployment rate in the country had something to teach Americans about self-reliance, so too, does a tiny country surrounded by enemies have something to teach the world about courage.

With some trepidation, I arrived at the JCC in Albuquerque to watch the rally that was streamed from the south steps of the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem into a computer and onto a screen in New Mexico. I say 'with some trepidation', because Glenn Beck has made some gaffes about Jews and Judaism in the past that in my estimation were the product of his ignorance about us and his lack of knowledge about our long and trying history in relationship to Christianity.

I believe that these gaffes were the result of the fact that he views Judaism through the prism of his own experience with Christianity--as Christians are wont to do--and thus made these critical errors, not out of hatred, but out of ignorance and a habit of letting his mouth run ahead of his thoughts--as radio talk show hosts are wont to do. I also think that the Jewish leftists who gleefully took those gaffes out of context and ran with them while tolerating outright antisemitism from the men and women surrounding their O-Messiah were more than a little ridiculous, but that's another blog.

As I watched the sun move across the ancient stones of the walls and towers that once compromised the outer defenses of the Temple, and as I listened to the music by the Jerusalem Synagogue Choir (and an Israeli pop star soloist), and as I heard the speech by Jerusalem's Mayor, I was not only reassured, but I was also moved. And there at the JCC in Albuquerque, I was even more moved by the fact that when I reflexively stood for Hatikvah**, the whole roomful of people around me--who were mostly Christians from pro-Israel churches and campus organizations-- hastily, but graciously stood with me. The latter reminded me of the times within the past ten years that I have stood alone, surrounded by Christians (and sometimes even a few Jews), to defend Israel and the Jewish people against lies and calumny.

However, when Glenn Beck took the stage during his narration of the history of the Temple Mount--a place special to three religions--I gripped my chair with anxiety. What would this non-Jew say about Israel, sympathetic as he might be? Thus far the program had been very tasteful, and the historical narration did not peddle an exclusively Christian understanding nor was it condescending. But now, what would he say about Israel? About us?

As Daniel Gordis wrote in his book, Saving Israel, this anxiety stems from the expectation that when we hear about Israel from outsiders, we will hear a horror story designed to show that there is no goodness in Israel; that Israel is the state that has been designated to carry the sins of the world, as a scapegoat sent out into the desert is forced to bear the accusations that most people dare not aim at themselves, in their impossible pursuit of an impossible moral code that demands suicide. Israel, after all, is a country that is hated not for its vices, but for its virtues. So it was that as Mr. Beck began to speak, my anxiety mounted.

Just as the speaker was a different man than most who speak about Israel, so, too, was his speech different. He began by stating his purpose:

"Today, I ask you turn your eyes to Israel and restore courage. I have been asked: What can you teach Israel about Courage? My answer is simple. Nothing.Then they ask: Why are you coming to Israel? Because, I say: In Israel, you see courage." ***

Previously in the program, Beck had demonstrated that the courage of faith, the courage of hope, and the courage of tikkun olam (repairing of the world) through the awarding of three Restoring Courage awards, given to the Fogel family of Itamar (posthumously), Maxim's Restaurant in Haifa, and Rami Levy's Grocery Stores, respectively. When he said these words, his audience had already been given examples upon which to reflect.

As Glenn continued speaking, my hands relaxed, and then went to my eyes to wipe away tears, for I was moved no more by anxiety, but by a combination of pride and relief, and a growing and fierce resolve. For Glenn spoke first about Israel's virtue, the commitment of her people--our people--to be strong and of good courage:

"In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds . . . against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true."

I felt relief, coming to know that there are people out there who are not Jews, and who can still see-- see through the lies of those cold-hearted bureaucrats at the UN, and the calculated hatred of the NGOs at the Durban Conferences, and through the casual libels of moral equivalency from the left and from the right--that Israel has virtue, that it is committed--as perhaps no other country is--to the protection of something good and precious and true. And I felt pride in the people that I call my own, and in my own willingness--for I am not bold, not really--to stand up, blushing, trembling and afraid--to counter the lies, the hatred and the venality of moral equivalence; to stand for principle even in venues where I am sure to be vilified.

My resolve grew as the speech continued, and Glenn Beck talked about why restoring our courage is so important now. For the world, he said, is once again on the verge of plunging itself into darkness and tyranny and death. And in such a world, the so-called leaders do not have the courage to tell the truth of things, to stand against the darkness, and it is their cowardice that takes us into the shadow. And it is our cowardice that allows it, and teaches our children that there is no remedy except chaos and fear:

"We may think: Oh, how different are today’s youth! But the young merely imitate their parents. They have seen how the world reacts to evil – with indifference. They watch, they learn, they imitate. What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.
When the Fogel family was killed in their sleep the world barely took note. The grand councils of earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent. It’s no wonder our children light their streets on fire."

What one generation tolerates, the next will embrace.

This is why Beck would have us look to Israel in order to restore our own courage. For that is what it will take to overcome the silence of the grand councils and the false pomp of those who wish to rule us. And this is where the resolve comes, for courage--as the Cowardly Lion learned--is not something from without, but something that is ignited within:

"In the 40 years of wandering in the desert, the ancient Hebrews were led through the dark of night by a pillar of fire. Courage is the act of walking into the darkness, and knowing that each step would be guided and protected by the pillar of fire, if we follow it. God is with us."

And this is where my resolve meets my doubt. He says what we sing at Purim:
"Plot your plots. Scheme your schemes. They will amount to nothingness. Ki-emmanuel. For with us is G-d."
But sadly, there are so many Hamans plotting our destruction; so many Hamans, but only one Purim.

For on the surface, there seems a vast difference between this naive Christian from America, who has boundless confidence that the Master of the Universe must do justice, must free the captive and must keep the Covenant. Beck stands in Jerusalem restored by human hands, and tells us that standing here--here, as the stones of Jerusalem burn gold in the setting sun--is why we can have courage. He says that the Pillar of Fire did indeed bring us here, after severe and awesome trials. Like the generation the wandered in the wilderness, we have seen the signs and wonders. But we have also seen the death and destruction; the smoke and ash that was once the bodies of those who made up a great civilization in the heart of Europe. To many Jewish ears such words do not come comfortably, with the blessed assurance that the American, the Christian, seems to have. Does the Eternal keep the Covenant? Jews might joke--as we have--that we ought to sue for breech of contract; that perhaps G-d ought to choose a different people. And we are not altogether joking, as the dark evil of antisemitism rises once more in our own time.

But there is more to Beck than meets the eye. He is no stranger to pain and doubt and destruction; not wrought by others, but brought upon himself. And out of despair, he set himself the goal of finding his life's purpose, of restoring his own honor and courage. And standing there, as he did, in Jerusalem rebuilt by human hands, this man of the nations, a stranger in Israel, reminded us of the hope and courage of those who dusted off their hands and rebuilt the city. And my resolve smoulders and catches again as I remember that a nes--a Hebrew miracle--is not the suspension of natural law, it is the tangible result of a stubborn resolve, the pillar of fire that burns in the human heart, demanding that we push back against death and destruction, that we live and live well. If G-d is, then surely G-d is in the small, wavering flame of that resolve.

Jewish tradition teaches there is a moment for which each person was born; a purpose which, if discovered and pursued, will lead to greatness and awesome deeds. Otherwise, life is vanity and chasing after the wind. I believe that Glenn Beck was reaching for his own purpose, which he believes is to be a watchman upon the walls, when he said:

"Let us have the courage to choose life.
No more incitement.
No more threats.
No more terror.
No more talk of genocide.
No more hate.
No fear.
No more lies.

"We can read their signs, listen to their speeches. So we know that they say what they mean and mean what they say.

"Well: SO. DO. WE. . . .

"And so I say that if the world decides it must know who will stand with Israel, who will stand with the Jewish people, so they know exactly who to condemn, who to target, let them know this.

Condemn me. Target me. I will stand with Israel. I will stand with the Jewish people. And if they want to round us up again, I will proudly raise my hand and say 'Take me first.' "

And they call this man a fear-monger, a hater, a chaser after wind. The "ubiquitous they"--those who are oh, so sophisticated, and oh, so cynical--they who cannot accept that others have found what they refuse to look for within themselves, and so they see in others only what they find within: fear and hatred and futility.
But we are all weak vessels, our lives finite, our striving uncertain, and the possibilities for errors and false starts are very real. The cowards never start, and the weak fall by the wayside. And those who believe the rumors of their own evil throw themselves over into emptiness. But those who pick themselves up, and dust themselves off, finding the goodness within themselves and others, those are the ones who come to their moment.

Glenn Beck has found his purpose. He has come to his moment. If he does or says nothing else of meaning or weight in all the years left to him, it will not matter. Neither does it matter what the cynics say of him. He has lived his destiny. He has found his place among the righteous of the nations.

There is more to the speech. Beck outlines the responsibilities that go with the freedom to chart one's own course; the responsibilities that make it possible to create one's destiny. He urges us to take up the challenge, to commit to good purpose. There is more, and it is well worth reading. But he ends on a theme of the last lines of Adon Olam, the creed of Maimonides, saying:

"Evil is counting on us to do nothing. Evil is counting on us to be afraid. But evil has misjudged us. Evil has misjudged us as it has misjudged the Jewish people. The last line of a Jewish prayer is …Adonai li, v’lo ira.
God is with me, I fear not. . .

". . .There are many reasons to hear my words, leave here and do nothing. We all have been trained to believe that we are not strong enough, smart enough or powerful enough. Abraham was old, Moses was slow of speech, Ruth was a widow, David was a little boy, Joseph was in prison, and Lazarus was dead. What is your excuse?

"You were born for a time such as this. Begin by declaring that this is why you were placed on this earth. It doesn’t matter how you’ve spent your years on this planet. What matters is what you do now from here. I cannot promise you safety, prosperity or comfort. But I can promise you this. One day, your children and grandchildren will ask you: 'What did you do when the world was on the edge again? What did you say when the West, Israel and the Jews were blamed again?'

"You will look them in the eye and say: I had courage. And on the 24th of Av, I committed to stand with courage… to walk… to march… arm in arm… behind God’s pillar of fire.

Adonai li v’Lo Ira. God is with me, I fear not. "

Ken yehi ratzon. May it be G-d's will.

*Member of the Tribe
** The Hope--the Israeli National Anthem
*** All quotes from Beck's speech are taken from the full text published at The Blaze

Israel: In Which I Do Not Know What to Say

I have been working on a blog entry in my head, and gathering together sundry comments that I have made here and there, but the POTUS announcement inviting Israel to just commit suicide already, and spare the world the need to destroy her, threw me into a sea of emotions that I have not yet traveled through. The situation seems so dire to me that I cannot find the issue I was preparing important. It is, and I know that; but for the nonce, it seems that I must let it go.

And although I have a number of ideas about the O-chamberlain's new version of "peace in our time", I am not at all ready to settle on one, and I find myself obsessively visiting blogs and news stories hoping to find a word of encouragement. I know they are out there, and I just must work through the obsessive moments of early mourning, and come out to a place where I can find some internal balance once again.

One of the very difficult things about being Jewish, loving my people and our homeland, Israel, is that it is impossible to go anywhere on the internet be it You Tube, blogs, news stories, and discussion groups, and not see the blinding hatred for us and for the Jewish state that appears to be everywhere. Even for posts that are supportive of Israel, I have learned to discipline myself against taking a look at the comments, for the vitriol is real and frightening, and so irrational as to be unanswerable. Everybody has an opinion, and most are based on misconceptions and a terrible ignorance of history.

Today, though, I am not prepared to discuss any of the issues, as the shock of what POTUS did is still fresh. And even though I expected it, it was still a shock. All I can say at this moment is this:
The O-dolater--O, he who presented himself as a Greek god at his nomination--does not speak for me. He never really did, and he never really can. I have never had much respect for him, and now all I feel is a sick contempt. By his actions and words, he is--as Craig Biddle of the Objective Standard noted--"giving the green light to a second Holocaust."

So, since I cannot write rationally at the moment, in mourning as I am for the government of my country that has made itself the enemy of my people, I will post a portion of a letter I wrote to Russ Roberts of Cafe Hayek, and some links of people who have a stake in the survival of Israel. The letter to Roberts expresses my thoughts on his second Israel post, one in which he laments the inability of people to discuss the issue without vitriol. I wrote, in part:

I am a frequent reader of Cafe Hayek, and I comment infrequently. I I did read your first post on Israel, and followed the link and found the Harsanyi's post to be thought provoking. I appreciate that you posted it, and I shared your post on my Facebook Wall in order to give it wider coverage.
I support Israel, and I agree with you that foreign aid is a bad thing altogether. I believe that the United States needs to stop supporting wars by providing funds to all sides in all areas of the world. I think that forcing people to support causes they oppose through their tax dollars will always lead to vitriol. But the vitriol and hatred aimed at the tiny state of Israel has a special and extremely nasty quality all of its own, and some of it crosses the boundary into outright antisemitism. Although antisemitism is almost universal on the political left, it does appear on the right. Growing up in a libertarian household, with a parent who helped found my birth state's Libertarian Party, however, I hardly saw it among Libertarians. But since the Ron Paul R3VOLUTION, I have seen it rear its ugly head to a startling degree, especially among those who substitute a good deal of anger and passion for strong and solid libertarian values. I have, for the most part, given up on commenting on any blog, news story or You Tube post about Israel, because the comments become so vicious and irrational that they are unanswerable. For this reason I did not even look at the comments on your first post when I cross-posted the link.
I want you to know that I do not think you have betrayed your principles and values, and it is my suspicion that those who have accused you of this have minimal education in the basics of libertarian thought and the major arguments within thoughtful libertarian circles.

Here are Russ's two posts about which I was writing: Israel and Israel II . "Israel" contains Robert's link to David Harsanyi's comments on the O-amalek's speech.

Here is what the Jerusalem Post columnist and Center for Security Policy member Caroline Glick's column: Obama's Abandonment of America .
Isn't interesting, that even though what is preying on the mind of every Israeli is dismay that the United States has abandoned our treaty with Israel, commingled with the relief that now at least Israel does not need to concern itself with pleasing the United States, this Israeli's realization is that in this speech Obama has made it clear that he is abandoning America and her citizens first and foremost.

Just a few thoughts, while I consider whether I want to pray: "Pour out your wrath, O G-d" or "Extend the wings of your protection over the land of Israel and all of its people". Maybe both.

How is This Pesach Different?

Ma nishtana, ha-laila ha zeh, mi-kol ha-leilot!
How different is this night from all other nights!
On all other nights, we eat chametz or matzah,
but on this night only matzah.
On all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs,
but on this night, only bitter herbs--maror.
On all other nights, we do not even dip once,
but on this night, we dip twice.
On all other nights, we eat sitting up,
but on this night reclining."
--The Four Questions of the Haggadah

I have been making Pesach in my own home for more than 20 years, and with the exception of a few years, I have had a first night Seder each year as well. Over the years, I have developed a rhythm for doing the spring cleaning, and for turning the kitchen over, and for making the Seder. This rhythm has carried over from apartment to rental house, from rental house to my first house, and to two homes with the Engineering Geek.

But this Pesach is different from all of the other Pesachim I have made. All my previous moves have occurred either after Pesach--meaning that the packing and spring cleaning accommodated one another, and after the Seder, the move could begin in earnest. This year, is different. The protracted move to the Ranch was supposed to over long before the cleaning began. And although this year, I was not expecting to make a Seder, I did expect to be settled in one place. Instead, I have been wandering in the wilderness, with some of my things here, and others there, with the things that are there needed here, and the things that are here needed there.

This is most disconcerting, as I had carefully nurtured my routine for Pesach, and I took comfort in the yearly process that led me physically from Chametz to Matzah, and spiritually from slavery to freedom. Pesach seems to have snuck up on me this year, and I am not ready. Everything is changing, including my relationship to my synagogue, my proximity to other Jews, and my predictable journey to Pesach itself.

It seems that through some choices and decisions that are good in and of themselves, I have quickly made changes that I was not at all prepared to make. Although I have felt that in a very strange way, guided through this process, as if each step was bashert, the messy way that some of this is happening--and not at all as I had planned, does not feel at all familiar or at all comforting. It doesn't feel at all as I think it is supposed to be.

I am not ready for this holiday. I just barely bought my Matzah before the store was out of it. And I was beginning to feel that sense of failure, of feeling that I am--as I often am--a day late and a dollar short.

Except, I realized that today, this year, I am meant to learn that Pesach is not about me being ready for it; it is about the holiday coming whether I am ready or not. That, as often as not, the joy of freedom can be found in the midst of the chaos of change.

And I think of all of the Jewish women, from Sinai until now--who by choice or perforce--also greeted a Pesach that was different from all other Pesachim that they had made; a Pesach that they did not make but that made them see the journey from Chametz to Matzah differently.

• the women who put the dough on their backs, in order to flee the slavery of Mitzrayim in haste;
• the women who wandered in wilderness, wondering whether manna could be matzah;
• the women who prepared a Seder before crossing the Jordan;
• the women who marched, chained, to the waters of Babylon, and made their first Pesach in the first Tel Aviv;
• the women who made haroset in the quiet years of Babylon, who chopped karpas while their husbands argued the Talmud in Yavneh.
  
• the women who fled the sacking of Jerusalem, wondering what to do with the lamb now that the Temple was gone;
• the women of Lincoln, who made Seder but did not taste the Matzah, driven out as they were into another exile;
• the women of the Good Friday Pograms, who were driven from their homes during the Chol ha-Moed, in Kishinev, in Odessa, with no time to take the Matzah;
• the women who prepared the Seder in the sewers and bunkers of the Warsaw Ghetto
• the women washing the plates on the way from Jerusalem to Rome, and from Rome to Spain, and from Spain to Morocco, to Greece and to the New World;
• the women throwing Chametz into the waters of New York Harbor, --a harbor indeed!-- at the feet of the Lady Liberty.
  

Pesach is, like all of the Holy times and seasons, zichronot-- a remembrance. And each year--Halvai!--we remember differently, we experience differently, we are different. And although each year is different, some year stand out so that we say:
Ma-nishtanah--How different it is! How different is this year from all the other years!

Why?

Because, Pesach is about freeing oneself and allowing oneself to be redeemed. And when routines and way of being change, whether due to external or internal forces, we are called by the Eternal to come forth and to meet the future with all of our hearts, minds and strength of being.

Whatever that newness might be. For whether it be good in our eyes, or bad, whether we confront good or evil in the world, the Holy times separate us out from that, and give us the time to meet it with joy and purpose. For we do not control the times we are born to, but we do control what we might do with the times we are given.

In my Bat Mitzvah Torah portion, Shabbat Chol-ha-Moed Pesach, Moshe makes anew the broken covenant with the Eternal, going up the mountain once again with tablets he carved himself, asking for the the black fire of the ten words to be inscribed there anew. And Moshe worries about the enormity of the task he has been given, to take this stiff-necked people on the journey from slavery to freedom, and he says to the Eternal, there on Sinai:

Moses said to HaShem: "Look, You say to me: 'Bring this people up!' But You have not informed me whom You will send with me. And You said: 'I have known you by name and you have also found favor in My eyes.'
And now, if I have indeed found favor in Your eyes, pray let me know Your ways, so that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your eyes; and consider that this nation is Your people."
So He said, "My Shechinah--my Presence--will go, and I will give you rest."
--Shemot 33:12 -14

This year, I am--like many Jews before me--caught unready for the great passing-over from chametz to matzah, from slavery to freedom. But ready or not, the birth waters will part, and we will once again cross over, to encounter once again the meaning of our freedom, to come face-to-face with the stark choice: shall we be slaves to Pharaoh, and all that entails, or shall we choose service to the One who cherishes our freedom?

The task is enormous. And the way ahead and all its dangers and opportunities is unknown to us. We know only one thing about what lies ahead: the Eternal Shechinah--that part of the Eternal that dwells among us--will go with us.

I am going, like my sisters before me, this year that is not like all other years; this Pesach that is so different than all other Pesachim.
I am going, unready as I am, because:
Ready or not, here comes Freedom!