The Empire State Building Shootings - A Reflection

I tend to associate the Empire State Building with the mystique that is New York City.  It is a landmark and an icon that deserves credit for its design and for offering an amazing view of the city from its tower.  

Today, though, it joins the list of the places where those with guns and other lethal devices have turned their weapons on innocent people and caused terrible harm to others.  The wounds of Aurora, Colorado are for sure still fresh in our hearts and we will never forget the tragedies at schools such as Columbine and on college campuses and federal buildings, in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11, and the list, tragically, goes on and on here and abroad as in Norway and too many other places around the globe...

The big picture question that wells up within me today after the incident at 34th St. in New York is why aggressors target innocents whether it be in attacks such as the one in New York or anywhere else? Is there some other way for people who are angry against a certain group, against the world, against some other religious group or country, to get out their 'angries' without harming the life of innocents?  

In the Hollywood comedy flick "Analyze This", Billy Crystal's character tells Robert DeNiro's character to 'hit a pillow' instead of going after other people.

While this example seems trivial, it suggests a simple premise that, ideally, we could provide ways for people across the world to manage their anger by directing it in non-lethal directions.  Angry at 'The West' for its 'degeneracy'?  Help us demolish homes and structures in festering slums in order to make room for new housing and sanitation projects.  Angry at the government for its inability to 'turn the economy around'?  Here is a free membership to your local boxing gym where an instructor will train you until you get exhausted and stop or until you become a contender in the ring.  Angry at the inability of social change organizations to create real and lasting change?  Help us by coming in to tear up old and dusty mission statements and strategic plans that you can then drop into the shredder for recycling.  I now understand that the initial murder in this shooting spree was a former employee shooting a boss or supervisor who fired him a year ago.  Angry about being fired or downsized?  You will now be an athletics training partner with paralympians and special olympians who may never have had the same abilities or opportunities to work as you, and we'll see how you feel after trying to keep up with their skills and spirit.  The possibilities are endless.

All these strategies are, I believe, rational approaches to a human tendency toward violence and conflict.  The inherent problem with such strategies, then, is that the people who commit the violence against innocents are not necessarily rational and we cannot necessarily identify them in advance.

And so the approach must be an approach that is educational and preventive.  Perhaps we might envision "Get Your Anger Out" centers on college campuses and in workplaces.  We might imagine character curricula in schools that teach and model ways to express anger in productive and constructive ways.

And in this educational effort we might wish to teach a Jewish teaching that I return to often.  'How do we know a person? -- By one's anger, one's pocket, and one's cup."

Working in reverse order:  We know someone by their 'cup', literally their drinking cup, meaning their temperance, their ability to make decisions about setting limits and their ability to set up a healthy relationship with both the people and things of the world.  We know someone by their 'pocket', by the way they use and spend their money and resources.  

Finally, we know someone by their 'anger':  What angers the person and how does he-she express that anger?

I challenge all of us to find ways to allow anger to be expressed in a healthy and constructive way in our country.  

The lives of innocent people depend on our efforts.

Parshat Va'et'chanan: Being #1

Parshat Va’etchanan 5772/2012

Being #1

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

In my love of both the Olympic message and Olympics competition, I have been watching as much coverage from London as I can.  If only the broadcast would come to the television without commercials!

To my pleasant surprise, there are a few commercials this year that share a positive and constructive message, despite the obvious, or not so obvious, sales pitch attached to them.  There is the message that we all have the potential to be ‘great’, to experience ‘greatness’ in our lives.  There is the message that we should set goals for ourselves to achieve our dreams, and that often the difference between winning and losing comes down to fractions of a second – or perhaps to minutiae for which we cannot necessarily predict or prepare.

It does also occur in the messages surrounding the Olympics that we recognize the extraordinary feats that the gold medal, #1 competitors achieve – that we recognize the hard work that each athlete puts in, the sacrifices they and their coaches and their families make to put them in position to be #1. 

It is this message that resonates and is in tune with the message of Shema Yisrael, the familiar prayer that comes from the holy words of this week’s Torah reading in parshat Vae’tchanan – the message that neither the world, nor God in fact, can be one, unified, whole until we create a world that makes the perception of that one-ness, unity, and wholeness visible, just as athletes, their families, and coaches are part of an effort to seek the often elusive #1 spot.

We do not control God and it is clear that we cannot control the world or the people in it such that we all might at once hear the unifying words of the prophet Zechariah saying, “Everyone will take upon themselves the recognition of God’s authority…”, familiar words from the Alenu prayer.  Also, God does not seem to want to impose strict control over us such that we lose our humanity.  Instead, we carry the Torah in our minds and in our back pocket as we search for guidance, much the same way as a traveler in an unfamiliar place turns to a guidebook to show the way through a place’s space and history.  The great Rashi teaches us that “Ado-nai Echad” is not descriptive but prescriptive – “God is One” is a hope, a vision of the future that will come to life only if the right pieces are placed at the foundation of our souls and our societies.

This lesson is also a foundation of the Olympic games themselves.  An athletic competition including representatives of 204 countries of the world is not a given, not something that would happen on its own much as we might hope for such an organic and natural event.  It takes an enormous investment of people power, time, energy, money, construction, planning, and significant obstacles of all kinds to put together.  When the flame passes from the host country to the next host at the end one wonders about the symbolism.  On the one hand the flame passes courteously from one host to the next, on the other hand the host country receives fire – fire that is hot and that can burn.

I would like to engage in a meditation with you, to develop a vision of a unified world, to inspire us to create it, and we will use the Olympics as the basis….Imagine that the population of the whole world walks through the gates and around the track at London’s Olympic stadium, million after million, billion after billion, every person fits into the stadium and everyone carries a torch and everyone gently puts his or her flame into the central cauldron, and everyone who is able contributes a few dollars into a tzedakah box whose base is on land and whose top touches the atmosphere as it fills up.  And then, as the games begin, we notice that every person is involved in one game or another, all pick up games, no medals, no one notices color of skin or gender, no one notices differences of dress, language, or culture.

How will we create a world that reflects the hopeful spirit of the Shema today, this Shabbat, through the end of this year 5772 – as we look 7 weeks ahead to Rosh Hashanah.  Let’s get a head start now so that by the time the fall holidays arrive, our best efforts will already be underway.

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.

"The Dialogue We Need": Parshat Korach Dvar Torah

There is a popular image that Jewish people are loquacious, effusive in communication with hand gestures, intonation, use of colorful Yiddish-isms and kibbitzing about all aspects of life in private and in public.

While it has been my pleasure to know many Jews who fit this description, I am also familiar with many who are quiet, reserved, and private.  My experience suggests that most, if not the majority, of Jews I know fall into the second category.

Of course – in reality most of us are somewhere in between, but I am interested to know the reasons that I have perceived what I see as a shift, again, a trend observed in a decidedly un-scientific way, something felt in the kishkes – a growing unwillingness in Jewish communities for individuals to speak up and speak out in constructive ways, a reluctance to enter into dialogue that could help communities grow in spirit and strength.

Korach, Datan and Aviram, leaders of rebellion among the people of Israel have no problems speaking out to make their voices heard.  They walk right up to Moses and Aaron to state their grievances.  If we can leave the circumstances of their recorded fate aside, we notice that their questions and issues are much different from the spoiled child complaints of the people for better water or food in the wilderness.  Their words suggest a well-thought-out proposal designed to create a constructive dialogue:  All of Israel are holy, they feel that Moses and Aaron have lorded it over them.  They seem to be coming together as a people, the hundreds of so-called ‘rebels’ to voice their thoughts.  Are we witnessing the beginning of democracy here?

Moses, to his credit, also speaks up to God saying to an angered God, “One man has sinned, will You unleash your anger against everyone?”  The Or Ha’chayim makes the astute observation that Korach has not really sinned to the extent of receiving the ultimate penalty.  He has only engaged in mumbling against God’s order.  Chizkuni observes that this verse is worded such as to suggest that there is no surprise here, that it is no surprise that Korach sins, or any other person among the people, since we have an inborn tendency toward this behavior.  Moses, once again, has the courage to speak up and speak out, not to roll with God’s intended response.

My hope is that all of us, myself included, might begin to be more willing to engage in constructive dialogue across the board:  about our synagogue, about issues that affect the Jewish community, about our own spiritual struggles and hopes.  There are many avenues for this dialogue:  with me and with leaders of our community, through the Jewish community relations council, the community relations advisory board, with local elected officials, the list goes on…

Well thought out and well intentioned dialogue, sharing issues and struggles so that we might find answers together, are all part of existing within a living Jewish community.  The real danger is that if we stay too silent, that our communities will disappear.  

This Shabbat I am inviting the exchange in our communities that can revitalize our connections with our institutions, that can revitalize the institutions themselves, and that can lead us to grow in our thinking and leadership.

While the Torah construes Korach as a leader of incitement, I suggest we take notice of his willingness for engagement.

Let’s begin the active dialogue today.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dvar Torah: Parshat Behalotcha "On the Road Again"

Parshat Behalotcha 2012/5772

“On the road again…”

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

On the road again -
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is making music with my friends

And I can't wait to get on the road again.

Thank you to Willie Nelson for inspiration.

This song is one of the anthems of a free spirit, as it focuses on doing the things we like to do, not following a set plan, enjoying the moment without making deep connections beyond the strains of music – for sure, a noble and creative activity.

And once again – we are living out the journey of the Israelites through the wilderness, walking with them, thinking with them:  making their journey our journey as well.

Their journey, our journey, though is one in which God sets the itinerary and timeline.  God directs movement, when to stop, when to go, and how long to settle in between.  It is a direct journey as of now, a direct journey at a time when traveling was slow, difficult, and dangerous. A direct journey with God’s guidance is, then, the best of all possible situations, the most comforting and hopeful situation for the mass of our people.

But what does it feel like to not know where we are going next, not knowing whether we will need to pack up the very next morning or whether we will be staying for many months? 

We plan differently for an overnight visit or an extended stay of many months. 

Ovadiah Sforno (1470-1550) notices the way that we behave differently when we have a short stay or an extended stay.  When the Torah explains, “By the word of God they would camp, and by the word of God they would travel,” he reacts, “[They camp] also when time is limited and they cannot arrange themselves (comfortably)” and, “[They travel] also as the cloud (of God’s Presence) lifts after a long time when they have already settled in.”(Sforno to 9:23)

Sforno recognizes just how difficult it is to pick up quickly right after we stop and stay the night, and how difficult it is to move once we become accustomed to a place and fall into a routine.

He speaks to the seemingly tentative nature of human dwelling, the sense of dis-ease that accompanies a quick exit, with the hope that we might rest longer and set down roots, and the equal unease of pulling up tent stakes after developing a connection with a place. 

What makes our connection to a place?  What comprises the feeling – the land, the society, the people, the institutions, a mixture of all these things?

But the underlying question – the one that animates the wisdom of Sforno, is the question of what is the value of our connection to place?  Why do we need it?

With connection there can be peace, predictability, routine, familiarity, comfort, a home base – a safe haven. 

The Israelites yearn for this, we yearn for it.  Every refugee yearns for it, including the ones who risk their lives to cross into Israel, those who try to escape the fighting in Syria, and us as well – as we were forced to leave or chose to leave our homes across the centuries.  

No one wishes to be in the place of the refugee, we want to be settled and safe, but the Torah reminds us that sometimes we might become too safe, too secure, that we need to think about who we are, where we are, refresh our viewpoint so that we can be constructive and helpful, to see the injustice in the world and respond to it, to see where there are needs and fill them.

It is good for us to think about getting on the road again.

Dvar Torah - Bamidbar 2012/5772

Bamidbar 5772/2012

“Herding Cats”

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

The job of organizing and moving a huge group of people is daunting.  On most days, I am more than satisfied if I can get myself out of the house with all the things I need for the day ahead. 

The job of moving perhaps over a million Israelites, with their personal items and animals, then could be as hard as herding cats.  The Torah describes the people as they move as one large mass through the wilderness, but the march to the Holy Land cannot be as smooth or as easy as it appears in the Torah’s communal memory. 

The great Rashi teaches us that each tribe camps under its own flag, each with a different color flag so that members of the tribe will recognize their brothers and sisters.  Each flag displays the symbol that Jacob has given to each of his sons – the lion of Judah, and ox for Ephraim.  Abravanel thinks there are only 4 flags to make organizing the main tribes on each side easier, and the other tribes file in under these 4 flags.

Clearly, staying organized is important – we have discussed how God wants to teach the people to be independent and self-sufficient, that organizing in this way unifies the people and encourages responsibility and accountability.

There is more though going on here than a  deployment of people, overcoming the inertia of the crowd.

God wants the people, wants us, to plan for the future as best as we can knowing that the future is, at least in our eyes, unwritten.  God models for us the way to envision the journey and its end, knowing that along the way there will be events that spring up from the unknown. 

Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, fourth Book of the Torah that we begin to read this week, is a Book of journey – the journey for our people as we leave Sinai and, at the end of the Book, end up on the borders of the Promised Land.  Along the way on this journey, the people scurry away from the path like a rabble of cats.  Moses and God try to herd them, knowing that, ultimately, God is guiding them and will guide them to the Land – that God will ‘bring in the herd’. 

In the end, when we look back on the course of the journey, we will notice that the cat-herding part of the story will be as significant as the well-ordered machine of the census and military style marching orders that we read at the beginning of the Book this Shabbat.  The routine, smooth sailing parts of any journey are usually not the stuff of memories.  Our minds are problem-solving mechanisms that tend to disregard the mundane (sometimes to our detriment).    

There are many across the world today who are trying to envision a future for themselves. Egyptians are voting for a president.  Syrian rebels continue their struggle.  Olympic athletes are gearing up for the London games starting at the end of July.  Students in school could not be more excited to study for finals…how well can we envision what we hope for in our lives?  How much can we open our hearts to not only visualize activities, but also to see ourselves in the way we interact with one another, in the way we hope to connect with other people?

This is the message and challenge of this week’s parsha and the whole Book of Bamidbar because, in the end, when we roll the Torah closed at the end of the fifth and final Book, the Israelites will still not be standing in the Promised Land, they will only be on its borders.  They will still only be able to envision crossing the Jordan.