Bulgaria, Aurora, and Beyond...After the Destruction

Shabbat Matot-Masei

After the destruction

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

2012/5772

A storm of violence and destruction has plagued our world this past week.  Perhaps the amount of violence is no greater than any other week when things happen around the world outside the eye of cameras and reporters.  On July 14, a driver killed Paramus college student Gabrielle Reuveni while she was jogging in Pennsylvania during a family vacation.  On the 18^th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, a homicide bomber detonated on a tourist bus in the Bulgarian city of Burgas on the Black Sea, killing 5 and wounding many more.  And last night a shooter opened fire in a movie theater in Aurora Colorado near Denver in an attack that reminds us of the fearful Columbine school attack that took place some 30 miles south and west in another Denver suburb in April of 1999.  The violence continues in Syria.

Waking up from these disasters we find ourselves now in the nine days before Tisha Be’Av, the ninth of Av, the summer season of mourning the way the Babylonians and the Romans destroyed our Holy Temples in Jerusalem, the way that we were expelled from England in 1290 and Spain in 1492, the mass deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto and more.  We are already in mourning, already in the darkest season of Jewish time, and still we are not prepared for terrible events that impact both our lantsmen and many, many more.

My reaction to all this is stunned silence, the same stunned silence that is the reaction of Aaron when his sons Nadav and Avihu are consumed by fire in front of the altar, the same silence that must consume Moses when God condemns him to die so close to the borders of the land where he has led the people since their liberation, the same silence that must fill the people as Moses will soon open his parting words to the people in what the great Rashi interprets as a rebuke for all their trespasses along the 40 year route from slavery to the eastern banks of the Jordan. 

And I turn to my community as well, to our kehilla, our holy pastiche of people that represents a small but faithful figurative reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surrounded by our fellow community members we can join as one in the activity known as the ‘trust fall’, not literally, again in a figurative way.  I fall into, or lean on, my community when passing through a period of time like today where I feel I am stepping over so much rubble, where my soul feels bruised for all the gunshots, for the blast of the bomb, for the faces of parents filled with screams, tears, and shock. 

As we enter this second day of the month of Av, we recall the teaching of the Rabbis that when Av begins, we minimize our joys (as opposed to when Adar, the month of Purim, enters we increase in joy.)  We minimize joy – in a deliberate way we identify with past, and present losses by assuming a state of mind that we otherwise might wish to avoid.  And here, among the ashes, among the rubble, among the wounded, we lead each other gently through the tortuous and frightening path, holding hands, lifting each other up over the sharp edges of stones and broken glass, determined not to take anything for granted, neither the helping hand, the presence of loved ones and friends, nor the very breath that keeps us alive whether in our waking hours or through the nights of, hopefully, restorative sleep when we place our sleeping selves in God’s hand.

'Siblings Against Siblings' - Dvar Torah: Parshat Chukat

Siblings Against Siblings

Chukat 2012/5772

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

The fighting in distant wars, half-way or more around the world not only is distant, but for many of us it feels distant. 

When there is debate on Israel’s defense policy, we try to remind everyone that Israel is a small country, 290 miles in length and 85 miles wide at its widest point, similar to the size of New Jersey.  And we remind everyone to think about what it would feel like if there were regular rocket attacks on our State.

And then there are the battles that people fight very close to home – battles in which family members are pitted against other family members, where conflict arises from within, and the ancestral connections break down.  We might think here in this country about the ways that some brothers fought against one another during the Civil War on different sides in states such as Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia.

And now we have reached a low point in the conflict between the Orthodox leadership in Israel and Reform and Conservative Judaism in Israel, a conflict that the establishment has pursued with rigor as non-Orthodox Judaism has grown.

Recently, the Israeli Supreme Court, following a case initiated by the Reform movement 7 years ago, decided that some non-Orthodox Rabbis should receive government funding, as our Orthodox colleagues do – funding that would not come from the department of Religious Affairs, but from the Cultural and Sports Ministry – most likely for political reasons. 

This past Tuesday, a chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Moseh Amar, called for and held a gathering of Orthodox Rabbis and friendly Members of Knesset.  He called for this gathering in a letter.(Read excerpts.)

After hearing this letter, we know well why my colleagues in the Conservative-Masorti and Reform communities are outraged at the accusation that we and our congregants are ‘uprooting and destroying Judaism’ or acting as saboteurs or terrorists.  We must remember that Orthodox groups receive some $450 million in government funding in Israel and Masorti receives some $50,000.

The Orthodox initiated fight reminds us about the way that the people of Edom, our kin through the line of Esau, brother to Jacob, do not allow us to cross their lands during our wilderness journeys, even if we will ‘pay our way’ and cover the cost of taking supplies during our travels.  Moses sends representatives to Edom from ‘your brother Israel’.  Edom denies us passage and backs up the denial with a threat of force.

The Rabbi of Kutna, a Hasidic master, teaches us that the Rabbis shared a lesson – When we, the people of Israel, were enslaved in Egypt, our brothers in Edom prospered.  And so when we come to them and ask for passage through their lands, when Moses communicates to them, “You know all the suffering we’ve endured in Egypt,” we would expect that Edom, Edom that has prospered and enjoyed the bounty of many years, that Edom should be able to know just how much we have suffered, even though they were not with us in this suffering.

But they do not have the empathy we hope for, and they react in a painful way, as potential new oppressors just like Pharaoh.

This past Tuesday as Rabbis inside the Chief Rabbinate offices met to strategize about how to deal with the Court’s decision and as some 50 Masorti Rabbis protested outside for their rights, a miraculous event happened.  Both groups chose to pause and pray the Mincha-afternoon service at the same time, one group inside and one group outside.

The lesson here is clear – for Israel to prosper we cannot forget that we are all related, whether our relationships are warm and close as with Abraham and Sarah or cold and distant as with Jacob and Esau.  And we must remain committed to the Jewish teaching that suggests we do not rejoice when others suffer-that we all must seek to raise up one another with dignity, that the way of a democracy is to allow and encourage disenfranchised people to speak their minds and seek recognition and leadership – a pathway that is no different from the way that women here and abroad fought for the right to vote, or the way here that African Americans and other minorities, including Jews, fought to be treated equally by the same governments, and States, who crafted the Constitution’s “We the people.”

Shabbat Shalom.