Re-Thinking Passover

Ask any Hebrew School student and they'll tell you what Passover is all about: liberation from slavery. Once we were slaves and now we're free, and the Haggadah tells us that we are obligated to think of ourselves as though we ourselves left slavery in Egypt. The rabbis teach many important lessons about the exodus narrative: that when we stood at the Sea of Reeds, the waters would not part until one Israelite had the faith to walk into the water; that the slavery experience was educative, so that we would experience being Other and would hold onto that awareness no matter where we go as a people, no matter whether we are Other or the majority culture; and repeatedly we are told to take care of the vulnerable in society "because you were slaves in Egypt." Remember, says God, that I cared about you not only because you were My cherished people but because you were vulnerable. Remember that I care about the oppressed, that I want them to be cared for, and if you recall your experience under the burden of slavery you will remember to care for the oppressed wherever they are, because I care about them as well.

Lots to think about this time of year, along with the shopping and cleaning and cooking.

But I think that within the scope of the cleaning and the cooking and the moving dishes and pots from here to there, only to move them again in a week from there to here, there is another very important lesson to learn from the exodus experience. We are not in control.

Remember that we suffered 400 years as slaves. Finally, God says to Moshe, "the cries of your people have reached Me." We were liberated when God chose to liberate us. Of course, the obvious response is, what took God so long? And my answer is, I wish I knew. But that's the point. Liberation happened, not in our time but in God's time.

Then we moved out into the desert and began the trek from Egypt to Eretz HaKodesh (the Promised Land). A pillar of smoke and fire went before us to guide us. When the pillar settled, we made camp. When it lifted, we broke camp and moved on. I think the breaking up and setting up of camp is what we are emulating this time of year, and while keeping a second kitchen, maybe in the basement, so the moving of equipment is not necessary, is a great energy saving idea, it allows us to miss the point - kind of like kosher for Passover bagels and muffins. You can make them, but how do you remember it's Passover? It's precisely the packing and moving that puts us back in the desert.

And we didn't move when we felt like it. We moved when the pillar moved. What was the impetus to move? Who knows? But when the time came to break camp and move on, women packed pots and men gathered the animals, and children and the elderly were put on goats and in carts, and the whole multitude moved on. For 40 years, we were not in control. We had a sense of our goal, but not of how long it would take nor what precisely the route would be. We had no Auto Club to help plan the most direct route. We depended on God's direction, and that and the manna were all we had.

Not much has changed. We are not in control, not really. A Yiddish proverb says, Man macht und Gott tracht - We plan and God laughs. When and whether we find our life partner, when and whether we have children, how successful our professional life will be - much of this is in our hands, but much is not. How quickly things come to pass, how fast we progress along our life's path, how readily we perceive the truths around us - much of all this is not in our hands. And we are frustrated and impatient and want things to be different.

At this time of year, as we imagine ourselves as having left Egypt with Moshe and the mixed multitude, perhaps we should also be thinking of how impatient we were as we moved across the desert, and how little of that trek was in our hands. (Come to think of it, the only part of our lives that's in our hands is how we react, and as I recall, the Israelites whined for 40 years, so much so that God decided not to allow the generation of the exodus to enter the Land. So much for the efficacy of kvetching.)

All is in God's hands, the rabbis teach us, except the fear of God. The point of that expression is that viewing God with awe is our choice, but the first part is equally important: how we respond to our lives has only one effect, and that is to define the quality of our lives - are we content, are we stressed, are we angry, are we at peace with ourselves? Putting ourselves back on the desert might teach us an important lesson in patience and looking at life from the long view. Israel got home. And so, eventually, will we.

Hag same'ah - may you have a sweet and kosher Pesah.

Our Society is Built in Our Classrooms

I'm sitting and listening to a conversation on NPR with a professor who's written a book on the state of higher education today. He talks about trying to teach English to people who are simply not interested in the subject but who have to take the class because it's required (writing, literature, what we used to call English 1A back at UCLA). He suggests that people are being required to get that BA for whatever job they need (the BA is the new high school diploma), even if what they're learning isn't really relevant to their job goal. For the first time, I joined the conversation and posted the following on the moderator's page:

I think the issue is far broader. Our society has changed so dramatically since I was in college in the 60s. We have become far too practicality-oriented, and we are no longer teaching critical thinking. The lower-division basic education we were all required to take before our major work taught us to synthesize, to weave together all the studies we struggled through. Today it's all about getting the degree and getting out to work. The more critically we think, the better citizens we become. I'm not impressed with focused degrees like MBAs. I'm more impressed with the breadth of a person's education, and kids (and schools) don't get that. It's a terrible loss to our society.

The moderator actually read most of my post on air and then the speaker disputed my point, that teaching critical thinking has been tried and it just hasn't worked.

I wanted to weep.

I do believe that we have become far too goal-focused in our society. We don't know how to think. The victory of Tea Party candidates and the belief that the health care overhaul is bad - BAD - even though it's great that this or that provision has proven really useful all point to the inability of many people to listen carefully to what politicians are saying. For a politician to rage at his supporters that "it's not about jobs and the economy, it's about stopping the federal government from funding abortion" even though it's long been prohibited for any abortion provider to receive federal funding for that procedure, and for his followers to cheer as though the man is saying something radical is simply unacceptable. Where is the voice declaring that he's nothing more than a demagogue?

A liberal education would provide people with the ammunition to think back at people who claim that the founding fathers eliminated slavery, would teach people that nothing is black and white, and anyone who tries to divide people into neat us versus them camps is pandering and to be suspicious of that person's motives. Allowing young people to grow up without the ability to think critically produces an electorate (if they even bother voting) too easily led. I remember one of the teaching units back in English 1A where we watched television commercials and looked at print ads and were asked to explain what the ad writer had really meant. What's the hidden message? What fear or need were they addressing? It was enlightening.

Are our kids being challenged? I had a professor of history when I was a freshman who delighted in bursting bubbles every chance he got. We brought all our preconceived notions to class and he destroyed them on a weekly basis. We fumed as we left, but we learned to think, if only to decide that he really had been wrong after all.

Who's teaching our kids to think? And more to the point, what are the expectations in our homes? Are our parents still asking "Did you ask good questions today?" I've engaged in so many debates with my own kids, some that have given me headaches, but at the end we had both grown, both been pushed to look at the issues differently. Are the parents of our school children and college kids also expecting their kids to be challenged intellectually? Or only to get a degree and then get out and go to work?

The liberal education used to be the gold standard. Then back in the 60s, kids started to rebel and say that it was irrelevant. Over the decades, we've repeatedly tweaked our thinking, and education has become less prescriptive - what do we want the society to look like - and more descriptive - let's teach kids what the society has decided is important. How do we build a society if all we're doing is giving people the entry ticket into the job market and calling it a college degree?

In Praise of Daffodils

I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils

…

[And] oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Thus, William Wordsworth. When I first met Will, I was a junior in English at UCLA and I fell totally in love with his poetry. My personal bucket list includes a trip to England's Lake Country, to walk where he walked and, if I'm lucky, to see the clouds of daffodils that so moved him.

Once upon a time, part of my Shabbat preparation was to stop at a local market and pick up a bunch of flowers for my table. Whatever the weather, I loved to see the flowers brighten up my dining room. The challenge each week was to choose which vase I would use: the pretty blue one my future daughter in law gave me for Hanukkah one year? The green one that had held flowers from a dear friend? A glass one I'd picked up while trolling through an antique shop on one of my vacations? Choosing just the right vase was a part of my Friday preparation that was pure delight.

I almost never bought daffodils. I seldom saw them for sale. There were astromeria, that I dearly loved, because they lasted forever. There were lilies, tulips in season, everything but daffies. But I didn't care, because I had a patch of daffies in my back yard. They bloomed riotously every spring, and what I loved about them was their absolute joy at having blossomed. "Look at us," they seemed to yell from the ground. "We're here, we're happy, and our sole purpose is to make you happy." OK that's a little egocentric, I suppose, but they never failed to make me happy. They just kept blooming, long after I'd have thought they would be dead, and you could almost sense their eagerness to keep their beautiful golden heads straight up, proud of their role in my life.

In the years since I left that house and that community, I've missed having daffodils around. And with my budget barely leaving room for food and gas, I've given up on fresh flowers every Friday. It's a shame, because how beautiful the table would look with fresh blooms, but with my income reduced and all my vases in storage, what's the point? My Friday night table looks so different anyway - no special kiddush cup (but a nice wine glass), traveling candle holders instead of my mother's candlesticks...not having flowers seems to make sense.

Then I went to Trader Joe's last week, and to my delight they were selling little bunches of daffodils. You couldn't even see the blossoms because they hadn't opened, and a bunch could be had for a mere $1.99. That I could afford.

The vase? Don't be shocked when I tell you I've saved the blue holder from the 7 day candle I lit when my Aunt Gert died a few years ago. It's been in a box, waiting for use, and I dug it out on Friday, filled it with water, and immersed the cut ends of my daffodils-in-waiting into the vase.

It's taken a few days. But as I sit here, I can take absolutely mind-expanding delight in looking at a bunch of daffodils, fully open, smiling at me and enjoying the knowledge that they are bringing me joy.

Trader Joe's probably won't have those daffies all the time. Too bad. I love looking at them. I love the sunshine they bring into my life, especially when it's pouring outside. I love their exuberance.

Will loved to walk on the hills of the Lake Country and watch the waves of daffodils bobbing in the breeze. I used to love to look out my window and watch my daffies nodding in the New Jersey sunshine. What a gift to be able to enjoy my little handful of daffies now, for as long as they can keep themselves alive.

A Torch Passed and Reluctantly Accepted

When someone dies before their time, we rage and weep and wonder at the justice of it all (or rather the perceived lack of justice). Even when someone dies in old age, we aren't ready to let go (I'm reminded of a comment to the L.A. Times coverage of the death of John Wooden last year, "I know that everyone dies, but I was hoping in his case there'd be an exception"), but when that person is young, and filled with promise, and has already made an enormous contribution to the world, and has perhaps even touched us personally, we simply aren't ready to let go.

Debbie Friedman died this morning. Some of you reading this may not know who she was, so allow me a few lines to try to explain her.

Debbie Friedman was a musician, but she was more than that. She was a God-touched musician, a singer of achingly pure voice, a composer of heart-breaking melodies (and sometimes less heartbreaking than rollicking: "I am a latke" has entered the repertoire of all Hebrew school music teachers for Hanukkah enjoyment). She changed the nature of Jewish liturgical music, from the somber cantor-centered arias to guitar-accompanied, sing-along music that raised the souls of everyone who heard her and joined in with her.

She was a presence way out of proportion to the size of her person for perhaps three decades. Jewish conferences of Jewish professionals would feature her presentation, and even if the largest room available had been booked, there was inevitably standing room only, seating in the aisles, standing in the halls outside the doors. Everyone longed to be near her, to hear her music, to be healed by her songs and touched by her words.

It is inconceivable that she has died.

The Jewish world is rocked by her loss, and we struggle to face a future filled with what she left us but without the promise of her new music to come. There will be no more new music.

But here's what I believe. I believe each of us has been put here for a purpose. Some of us figure out what that is. Others never do. Still others trip over the purpose, do what we are meant to do, and then move on, never knowing how important our act was.

Debbie was meant to lift us. She was meant to infuse our souls with strength, the spices of havdalah at the end of Shabbat that would last across the week. She was meant to show us possibility, what Jewish music, what Jewish worship could be like. She was meant to open the door just a crack and give us a view to a different place.

She did that, and having done that, she was called home.

But now comes the real challenge. Having shown us what was possible, she passed the torch to us, to expect more in our services, to invest ourselves in our services, to reach out to others and with whatever gifts God has given us make of our congregations true communities.

When I have officiated at a funeral and accompany the family home to help them light the seven day shiva candle, I often quote the Proverbs that teach that God's light is the human soul. I reflect on the candle and note that the soul of the loved one we have just buried has been extinguished, but before it was, it lit sparks in each of those who loved them, and it's up to those that person left behind to keep those sparks alive.

If that is so for a person of modest reknown, known to family and dear friends, how much the more so is it so for someone like Debbie. She lit sparks of joy and God-love in each of us. Her fire has been extinguished, but our job has just begun - to keep those sparks alive. Sing her music. Create music of our own. With words or melody, reach out to God, express the fear, the joy, or the hope that within us. It's not just about singing her songs. It's about singing our own.

Y'hi zikhra barukh - may her memory be a blessing.

Why I Love This Country

When I was in rabbinical school, the message I got over and over again was that there's morality, which can be relative, and there's law. What might be "so unfair!" to one generation might be perfectly permissible or even necessary in the eyes of another. What mattered, said my law teachers repeatedly, was the law. Can the act be justified according to the law? Specifically, said my law teacher, Rabbi Joel Roth, if you can trace the law back to Sinai, you're on solid ground. Just to announce a law is "unfair" and therefore worthy of pitching is to allow contemporary sensibilities to determine what's acceptable. And "contemporary sensibilities" change. That's why they're called "contemporary."

I have been sputtering for a while over the dust-up over gay rights, and specifically gay marriage, in California. I cheered the ruling in 2008 that gays would be allowed to marry. I watched with disbelief when the returns came in on Election Night, as those on the other side of the gender rights divide cheered as Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in California, won handily. In California, I yelled? Here? In my home state? People are saying no?? How is this possible?

In the years since that vote, I've listened to gay people express their frustration at the inability of straights around the country to understand their point of view. I've watched state after state vote down measures that would permit gay marriages to be approved. And I've felt my blood pressure rise as I listened to the justifications of those on the right for their belief that they could determine by vox populi what is acceptable in this country.

The arguments have been made. Is there a point to repeat here that if the voice of the people had been sought in 1954, separate would have continued to be perceived as equal? In 1967, the voice of the people would have overturned the ruling that determined that couples of mixed race (i.e. a black person and a white person) may marry.

Another memory I have of rabbinical school is seeing a cartoon on the dorm room of a classmate. It showed a board room with the table surrounded by men in suits, and the caption read, "The Committee on the Status of Women." Every woman rabbinical student who saw the cartoon no doubt had the same reaction I did - we'd laugh if it weren't so true. The status of a minority is always in the hands of the majority. And when "contemporary sensibilities" determine the fate of the minority, and contemporary sensibilities are moving at a snail's pace (because who in power would ever choose to give it up?), the status quo remains, barring a miracle.

Sometimes, miracles happen, but those "miracles" are in truth only the triumph of dispassionate law over the emotions of the people.

The ruling this week by Judge Vaughn Walker was the triumph of law over the hissy fit of the people. It was the statement of American law that in order for something to be changed, proof (that old bugaboo) must be brought that the change is desirable. To overturn gay marriage, proof must be brought that such an institution is indeed as frightening and evil as it has been presented to be. That never happened, and the brilliance of the judge was that he was careful to document all the "proof" that was brought (one of the "expert witnesses" was someone who presented dire consequences of gay marriage and when asked the source of his findings, proclaimed, "The Internet." There you go - we all know that only truth is found in cyberspace) - or not brought - and to go point by point in explaining why the "evidence" brought by the defense was insufficient to allow Prop. 8 to stand. We understand that the next step will be a challenge on the appellate level, and the record of evidence brought and how it was evaluated will be critical in determining whether there is cause to vacate Judge Walker's ruling. The better his documentation, the better the chances for the anti-8 folks to maintain the ruling. And Judge Walker did a bang-up job.

Once again, I listened to NPR this morning, and once again my blood pressure went up. I heard people complaining that if gays are permitted to marry, straights will cease marrying and therefore procreating, and there won't be any more babies born in this country. Compare that with a recent study showing that there is a growing disparity between higher educated women having fewer children and women who are either less educated or in fundamentalist religious communities having large families (more on this in a later blog -stay tuned). Do these pro-8 people really think that if gay marriage is permitted, fundamentalist Christians and Muslims and Orthodox Jews will stop marrying and having children? Really?

The greatest threat to heterosexual marriage is heterosexuals. The divorce rate stands at 50%, without the help of gays. Children in heterosexual marriages continue to be confused, not because they have two mommies but because one of their parents (or both) seem to think that marriage vows are merely suggestions. Or "to love and cherish" means "to beat to a pulp." Children in heterosexual marriages are exposed to a huge spectrum of experiences, from healthy and loving situations to promiscuity and abuse. There are children of straight marriages who vow never to get married "if that's what it means to be married," or never to have children because "I never learned how to be a good parent from my dysfunctional parents." Prop. 8 does nothing to protect those children. Neither does it do anything to protect the gay children growing up in families where the presumption is that everyone is straight.

To paraphrase the cartoon from my Seminary days, the "Commission on the Status of Gays" is populated by straights, not one of whom understands what it means to be gay, or, since it's hard for anyone to truly "get" what it means to be part of a different population, is even willing to listen to what it means to be gay in America. A 10 year old whose friend has two daddies will not be "influenced to 'turn gay,'" but a 10 year old who knows he's different will be discouraged, despondent, and ultimately depressed if he sees no one in his life who is respected, admired, loved, and gay.

When Barak Obama was inaugurated nearly two years ago, I shelved my lesson plan for the day and decided to have a conversation with my 5th graders about the historical import of the day. They wrote prayers for him and his family. It was very cool. But I'm thinking in particular of one girl who asked how old his daughters were. When I replied, she said, "Oh, then Malia can be my friend, and Sasha can be my sister's friend." I smiled and agreed (from her lips to God's ears, but what a statement!)

It was 2008, and a little white, Jewish kid in the San Fernando Valley was thinking that it was cool that the president had daughters her age and her sister's age. It never once occurred to her that the fact that she was white and they weren't would be any kind of a problem. It was as natural for her to think of the Obama girls as friends as she would think of any new neighbor on her block.

Please God, may the days of stomping around like Rumpelstiltskin end, may the fear and the hissy fits and the circling of the wagons and the overwhelming sense of threat end, and may it be soon that our children can come home to talk about their friends with a different family constellation and find nothing unusual about it. And may the day soon come that gay kids no longer find suicide the only option as they come to terms with who they are.

What's the Big Deal?

This will be a very short post. I just want to know what's changed.

There was so much press about the wedding - no, the Wedding - this past weekend, and in particular among my colleagues about the nature of a wedding with a Jewish participant and a rabbinic co-officiant on a Shabbat afternoon, with huppah (bridal canopy) and a ketubah (marriage contract)... Mah pit'om? What's the deal all of a sudden?

Why are we suddenly so filled with opinion about the nature of intermarriage in this country? Are Marc and Chelsea the first couple to cross the religion line? Hardly. They're frankly not even the first celebrity couple to do so.

Think Caroline Kennedy and Arthur Schlossberg. Not a hiccup. Back in the 70s, Henry Kissinger chose to marry on a Saturday afternoon, and there was indeed a response in the Jewish community about his insensitivity, even though he was marrying a non-Jewish woman. Even Sandy Koufax, American Judaism's hero for not playing on Yom Kippur, married a non-Jewish woman.

So what's the big deal about Marc Mezvinsky?

And you know - that's not a rhetorical question. I don't understand why there's such an uproar, a struggle over "is this good for the Jews." This is not the first interfaith marriage to take place, not the first to have a rabbinic presence, not the first to have a huppah - no one mentioned whether he broke a glass. (For so many families, that's the essence of a marriage where a Jew is involved - you gotta break a glass.) Is this a trumpeting of our having Arrived - look at the celebrity family he's marrying into? Certainly this can't be about the threat of intermarriage - if this couple is the first glimmer of intermarriage you're reading about, what planet did you just arrive from?

So - somebody out there - please clue me in. What's the big deal?

I want my country back

I need to stop listening to public radio. Every once in a while, I hear a piece, or an interview, or a series of call-ins that sends my blood pressure through the roof. I suppose the alternative is to listen to a bit of Vivaldi and put my head in the sand, and I suppose I have an obligation to learn what's going on in the world. If someone wise out there knows how to listen to scary stuff calmly, let me know.

Here's my fear, the real fear. People like me are becoming a minority, and with all due respect, people like me are what made this country what it is - er - what it used to be. I'm not sure I like what my country has become.

When the Founding Fathers met to craft our Constitution, they argued and debated and realized that the only way to believe the infant country would survive would be through compromise. We have lost that skill. We have lost the recognition that everyone has something of value to add to the conversation, that (in Jewish terms) only disputes that are for the greater good are worth engaging in. Disputes not for the sake of heaven (to quote the Mishna) are forbidden, because they are about vanity, about the self, not about the greater good. And all I see around me are disputes that focus on the speaker, or the speaker's constituency, or the speaker's ratings or popularity. Everyone's talking, and no one's listening. Everyone insists on learning the black and white of issues, ignoring the fact that most of life is lived in shades of gray.

Further, as I recall, the Founding Fathers stipulated that the government shall make no laws concerning the establishing of a state religion. If only those on the far right would read the Constitution they profess to love, and note that when the laws of a country are in place to serve only one population, one faith tradition, to the point of making the participating in another faith tradition difficult, we have transgressed the Constitution. Ah, those pesky amendments.

Case in point: all those who rail against abortion seem to be blissfully unaware that there is more than one approach to considering the unborn fetus than the Catholic/Christian one. The Jewish tradition understands the issue is a complicated one (warning: gray area alert). Jewish law understands the fetus to be part of the woman until the birth process begins, and if the fetus is posing a threat to the health of the mother, the mother has an obligation to terminate the pregnancy to save her life. Of course, Judaism does not see abortion as birth control and understands the fetus as having the great potential for life, but until birth, the fetus is as much a part of the mother's body as a gangrenous limb.

So, pre-Roe v. Wade, if a woman sought an abortion because she was facing a medical issue (perhaps it was her fourth or fifth child and she had heart issues), she was simply prohibited from any conclusion to her pregnancy other than the birth of the child, even it meant the loss of her own life. Catholics may respond that a Catholic mother had been baptized while the baby had not, but that works only if you are a Catholic. Religious sensibilities drove (and continue to try to drive) the access to abortion by women who are not part of those religious communities. Preventing me from obtaining a safe abortion if my physical (or mental) health were at risk is denying me my rights under the First Amendment. Does anyone care?

So now, just last week, I was astonished to hear about a move to get yet another proposition onto the California ballot in November (you gotta love California - get enough people with an opinion together with a petition and you can get anything on the ballot - worse - get enough other people together who like what the petition said, and you get new law, whether it's moral or not, whether it makes sense or not - witness Prop. 8 and gay marriage). The people behind this new initiative, Rescuemarriage.org (this is not an endorsement), want to go Prop. 8 one better - to truly save heterosexual marriage (I still don't get why it's being threatened), we need to make divorce illegal in California. Now, if you want to leave your marriage, you have to leave the state.

There are those who believe the whole proposal is a satire, like Swift's "A Modest Proposal." If you look at the organization's website, it's not funny. They're dead serious. And not only are they proposing to make life even more difficult for those in abusive situations, once again, they are ignoring centuries of Jewish law by claiming that the notion of divorce is a relatively recent construct. Jesus, they say, never talked about divorce.

Maybe not, but Moses sure did. Divorce is part of Jewish law, again, not encouraged ("when a man divorces the wife of his youth, the stones of the Altar weep") but permitted because Jewish law recognizes the humanness of the partners in a marriage.

I might also point out that gays who decide they have been living a lie and need to come out and live openly as gays (and their spouses) are also condemned to a life of unhappiness. But hey, who cares?

My kvetch? The underlying complaint I have that ties all these issues together? I've disappeared. Not only me, but everyone like me, people who are Jewish and who have a basic understanding of Jewish law, and who would expect to live according to Jewish law to the extent it does not countermand civil law. (The rabbis of the Talmud taught that the law of the land is the law, but there are limits. If a law were passed tomorrow to require everyone to eat a pound of bacon every week because the poor pig farmers are in trouble, we would argue vehemently against this law.)

"The Judeo-Christian tradition" is a fallacy. "Judeo" is put at the front of "Christian" to assuage the rest of us, but in truth we do not agree with everything our Christian neighbors believe, and yet despite our greater visibility in contemporary culture (and all the excitement over the Clinton wedding), our essential differentness is being ignored, or deemed irrelevant, and the result of that perception of irrelevance is the arrogance of presenting laws that satisfy only the Christian approach to private lives.

I don't like disappearing. I don't like feeling irrelevant. What's the point of feeling comfortable announcing I'm Jewish, or a rabbi, if that doesn't mean anything? I have more to bring to the table than just "why don't you accept Jesus?" No one asks. Because no one cares. I hate that.