Behalotcha - 'Between one misfortune and another'

Behalotcha 2013/5773

Between one misfortune and another

Neil Tow ©

The TV news flashes pictures of the scenes where they will report the news.  One shocking story after another.  One tragedy after another until numbness sets in, even weather is a study in potential dangers and the only breaks between these segments are commercials that blare in loud and discordant sounds images of products or services we may or may not need.

A football team takes a time out to discuss strategy and to catch their breaths during the course of a game.  One play after another, tackle after tackle, bone-crunching, plastic helmets against helmets, a relentless poem of an organized, ritualized conflict that once again is interrupted by these time outs and more commercials.

Real life offers neither the flow, nor the badly needed breaks, that either of these performances offers.  Life can be unrelenting in its painful progression, molding and kneading us beyond our ability to respond to pain, suffering, indifference, apathy, and even to the happy and the good.

We find one example of breaks in the famous words that leap from the Torah scroll this week, set apart from the rest of the text by a large inverted ‘Nun’ on either side.  The first part of this tiny, two verse section begins with the familiar words: Vayhi binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe…And concludes with the words that close our Torah service, Uv’nucho yomar – When the Ark travels, and when the Ark comes to rest. 

For centuries our ancestors have debated why this poem stands apart with a nun as a breakwater before and afterwards.  Rashi explains to us that the first nun breaks after a ‘first misfortune’ and the second nun breaks before the next misfortune. 

Within the two inverted Hebrew letters, there is a refuge, a place of calm after one storm and before the next, or perhaps in the eye of the current storm.  In the wake of the fourth major tornado to hit the city of Moore in Oklahoma in little more than a decade, the people there are existing in that vulnerable place seemingly inside the refuge between misfortunes.  Yesterday, students and teachers gathered together for a post-tornado in-school reunion and then returned to the battered homes on battered streets to continue trying to salvage their lives.

In the longer wake after Superstorm Sandy, beaches on the shore have begun to open up, boardwalks rebuilt, rental properties hard to come by as reservations fill the rolls.  Storm damage around our larger area persists as other areas struggle to complete repairs and ‘open for summer’. 

And we will gather together on Monday, Memorial Day, to remember our brave men and women in uniform who willingly walked into storms of another kind, of a human created kind, and were unable to return home along with their friends back to their families and loved ones.

In all of these stories, the calm between the storms has not proven to set the tone for the future.  One tornado hits and then another just as strong if not stronger.  One storm hits the northeast and then another still stronger.  Waves of terrorism spread over the world and there are more white stones in our military cemeteries. 

We cannot seem to prevent armed conflict in this world, despite our best prayers and efforts.

We can though commit, in these calm moments between the storms of nature, to take steps to mitigate the impact of future storms.  I reacted with anger and disbelief when the city manager of Moore, Oklahoma said in a radio interview that with regard to whether city residents should be required by law to build storm shelters, especially given the tragic deaths at the local school, he replied, “The lives of children are priceless, but we know what building costs are.” 

Nothing compounds pain more than stating the obvious.  The city manager’s coldness on this issue does not fit in with the spirit of the Oklahoma that sent its trucks to our neighborhoods to restore power after Sandy.  Now it is the turn for us, for people with the know-how, to go over there, to sponsor and build the shelters so that the city of Moore does not have to shoulder the cost itself. 

Now is the time for residents of our area to begin long-range planning for the next fall storm season. 

Now is the time to support the families of our fallen soldiers, so that we may imitate the loving-kindess of God who everyday is ‘zokef kefufim’, the one who enables people bent over in grief and loss to stand up a little more straight.

TV News and football games have a life of their own.  They are both performances rather than lived experiences.  They operate by their rules.  Our Torah today pricks us to awareness of the haven between the misfortunes that appear in our world, helping us to challenge the momentum of Torah reading so that it does not become rote, to challenge us to rebuild and remember, to have the strength to carry the Ark forward through the most terrible storms and to summon up the courage to shatter and scatter their destructive potential, Vayhi binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe, kumah Ado—nai ve’yafutzu oy’vecha mipanecha.

What can we do in the face of terror? -- "Do not stand idly by..." (From Parshat Kedoshim)

Kedoshim 2013/5773

To not stand idly by

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

As we paid tribute on Yom Ha’Shoah to the victims of Nazi terror, we focused on this year as the 70^th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising – a battle that was lost before it started, doomed to fail due to overwhelming enemy forces and lack of support and supplies from outside the ghetto.

The uprising began 70 years ago, today, April 19, 1943.

Nothing is left of the Ghetto – walking in the ghetto area we see apartments, green lawns, roads, and memorials – and a soon to be opened museum of Polish Jewry.

And as our recent Eastern Europe trip drew to a close, news of an attack on innocent bystanders, fans of the Boston marathon, people who, like me, stood on the sidelines cheering at the finish, helping in a small way to get people toward the finish line.  People like Krystle Campbell, 29, 8 year old Martin Richard, graduate student Lingzi Lu whose lives ended at that finish line.

“Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa,” our parsha teaches, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”

If we know we can save someone, we should, but what if we do not know the danger?  What if we are as surprised as everyone else?  What then?  Is there a way to not ‘Stand idly by’, a way to be active after the fact?  Can we fulfill God’s expectation of us even as the blood of our fellow human beings stains the sidewalks on Boylston Street, or a Jerusalem street, or a village in Syria, or anywhere else?

We think to ourselves, I am not an FBI agent, I cannot assist with the investigation.

I am not CIA or NSA, I cannot help clarify intelligence reports.

I am not a first responder, I could not be there to bind wounds.

I do not live in Boston.

Can we be active in the debates and planning around issues of gun violence and other violence in our area?

Yes.

Can we offer material, spiritual, and moral support to our brothers and sisters in Israel who live in range of rocket fire?

Yes.

Can we muster the courage to step in when we see bullying occurring between adults and kids?

Yes.

Can we offer our prayers for the victims of violence and spread messages that there are non-violent ways to resolve conflict?

Yes.

We should honor though, at the same time, our ‘would have feelings’, the sense that we could not offer assistance in the moment even if we wanted to do so, perhaps even if we had been there – after all, we could have become victims ourselves no matter how good our intentions or skills.

Jewish thinking gives us language and action points in this situation.  Missing an opportunity for a mitzvah, for example, is much different than an intentional avoidance of doing a mitzvah.  If ancient Jews could not offer the Passover sacrifice on time, there was a Second Passover opportunity one month later.  If we miss offering the Morning prayer, we can ‘make it up’ later on – there’s even the text of an Amidah called ‘Havinenu’ designed to be recited in moments of duress when we cannot do a full version.  Teshuvah is a continual process of self-reflection and a road to reconciliation that opens the chance for each of us to make right what went wrong between us and God, and between people.

Action after the fact may feel too late, ‘token’, or just as something that makes us ‘feel better’. 

I believe though that the people centered wisdom of Jewish generations suggests that we do not get mired in such feelings. 

I believe in the story told to me by Rabbi Jeff Summit of Tufts Hillel, of the Rabbi who taught, ‘What can we learn from the telephone?  That what is said here is heard there.’

What we do here will echo there – wherever we could not be, wherever we wished we could offer a hand, wherever we fear to go because we legitimately feel we are putting our own lives in danger – the danger is the idleness or inertia, that we stand, planted in place, until the moment when the evil finds us

Good News from Israel - Changes coming at the Western Wall

Emor 5773/2013

Good News from Israel

Amidst a new wave of terrible devastation, Boston, Bangladesh, Texas, a vicious shooting in Manchester, Illinois, there was some good news out of Israel, some news that marks a hopeful change in the thinking about religious pluralism at the Kotel, the Western Wall, one of the most revered sites for the Jewish people. 

Jerusalem judge Moshe Sobell upheld an earlier ruling that cleared the Women of the Wall from being held on charges of creating a public disturbance by their once a monthly prayer gatherings.  He also ruled that these women, many of whom wear a tallit, who read Torah and daven as a minyan, do not violate ‘local custom’, which was a legal basis for the arrest of 5 women earlier this month.  He based his decision on a 1994 ruling from High Court Judge Shlomo Levin who argued that ‘local custom’ is not limited to traditional Orthodox practice.  Levin argued that custom can change and that the operating principle should be a ‘tolerant approach to the opinions and customs of others.’

The Jerusalem police have agreed to follow the court’s ruling and refrain from arresting the Women of the Wall who for 25 years have been holding services one each Rosh Chodesh, each celebration of the new month.  Over this time, they have been verbally and physically abused at the Wall, detained, shackled, arrested.

Rosh Chodesh is among the days that we celebrate life, hope, and the renewal of time and our people.  Parshat Emor places most of the major Jewish holidays in the foreground, as God asks us not only to know what these days are and when they are, but to actively proclaim them and act on them, to bring the holiness of these days off the pages of the scroll or book and into lived experience.

The writer R. Yakov Zvi Mecklenburg, Haktav ve’Hakabalah, explains that Shabbat, the first and most basic ‘festival’ in the Jewish calendar, a day that sets the example for all other holy days, is a day of rest, pausing, and ceasing from work.  Also, Shabbat suggests a day for opening the mind, a day when we give our physical selves a rest and open up the potential for studying and exploring holy words and ideas.

I believe that Women of the Wall are most interested in being able to do just this, to create meaningful holy experiences, to encourage women by facilitating a sacred space where they may fully express their beliefs in a supportive environment.  For the women in our community, on your next Israel trip, try and schedule your trip so that you can attend a service on Rosh Chodesh with this trail-blazing group.  Their courage gives us strength.  Their vision has motivated the Israeli government to instruct Natan Sharansky to implement a plan that will establish mixed prayer space at the lower part of the wall, Robinson’s Arch, that is regularly open to all who wish to daven this way, rather than the current arrangement that requires reservations.  The new area will be equal in size to the upper plaza and both will be accessible through one entrance.  We should all applaud this significant step and share our appreciation with Israel’s leaders and with the Women of the Wall.

And so amidst more chaos we find a new and hopeful order, amidst political instability in the Middle East we find voices raised up in song a prayer with renewed strength, and we see Eretz Yisrael, the State of Israel, growing, changing, evolving, striving to find a way to live up to the high expectation that Israel, that our people, can be a light that shines out to all nations and peoples of the world.

Pesach - Chol Ha'Moed, 'In the Middle and looking ahead'

Dvar Torah – Chol Hamoed Passover

5773/2013

As the Israelites leave Egypt, with Moses leading the way, everyone is full of hope, fear, and wonder.  The after-effects of the plagues, the Egyptians handing over gifts on the way out, are still in the air, and Moses is full of deep reflection, but he feels something pricking at him, cannot figure out what it is.  With each step that he takes, something is irritating him, he can feel it.  It is slowing him down.  Chaim the shepherd is walking just behind him, smiling.  Moses smiles back.  Ah, he says to himself, God is reminding me to slow down, to experience this moment, to be humble as I lead the people – Thank you, God!  After 10 years in the wilderness, he still feels this irritation, always in the same place.  One day, out of pure curiosity, he looks over his shoulder as he is walking and sees Chaim the shepherd again, and with each step Moses notices that Chaim is stepping on his heel, rubbing his ankle and causing his sandal to pop up.

There are moments when we begin to wonder whether we are feeling inspired, or just living with all the typical comforts and discomforts, or ideally a combination of the two would be ideal.

During this middle Shabbat of Pesach, we are all like the Israelites, walking in the middle of the wilderness, coming off the high of the Seders and settling into a new pattern, especially a new diet for the next several days. 

The Torah portion follows the same range of emotions.  Giving of the Torah at Sinai lifted us up to the heights, as the Rabbi of Ger might say, at Sinai our souls lifted up closer to their source in the Eternal One.  Then everything came crashing down as we turned to the Golden Calf in a moment of national weakness.  Fascinating then, that as we read from this section in Exodus that one verse reads ‘Do not make idols [to worship]’ and the very next verse, without any hesitation or break in between, says ‘Keep the Festival of Matzah for 7 days…for in the month of Nisan you went free from Egypt.” 

We need to refocus ourselves after the Seders, reset ourselves to adjust to these middle days without a major ritual event, and to make sense of the 7^th and 8^th days of the holiday that also do not feature another Seder or other specifically Passover ritual or event.

It is at this time that we, just as the people at Sinai did, could get bogged down in the low after the Seder high.  The Rabbi of Ger (Gora Kalwaria, south of Warsaw) teaches a classic lesson that chametz, the leavened products we do not eat on Pesach, represent over-confidence, a too deep sense of our own esteem, we might call it arrogance – as represented by the ‘inflated’ quality of leavened bread that rises.  And he points out that in terms of the letters, there is only a one letter difference in Hebrew between chametz and matzah, chet-mem-tzadi, mem-tzadi-heh – hay and chet are the unique letters in each word.  In matzah the key letter is hay, a horizontal-vertical with a small dot below – that small dot represents the humble, simple bread of Passover, and the quality of humility and gratefulness we feel for being free.  The chet in matzah represents the way that the small dot of the hay rises up and turns into a chet, the way that leavened bread rises, for sure a rising sense of self but we must be careful not to get carried away, to get distracted from the message of the holiday both for us as a nation but also as individuals – as people who are seeking to live out the message, that since we know the sufferings of being slaves, of living under oppression, we are sensitized and well-equipped to notice injustice in the world and repair it.

As I read recently in Irving Howe’s wonderful book “The World of Our Fathers”, about the Exodus of East European Jews to America in the period of the 1880s through World War I, Romanian Jews, following repressive decrees, the 1899 pogrom in Jassy, and subsequent mass expulsions, caused the Romanian Jews to do something unprecedented.  They organized into ad hoc committees, and left Romania as fusgeyer – walkers – tramping hundreds of miles across the country,  walking in ‘double file, brown khaki, military leggings, broad-brimmed canvas hats, with an army knapsack and water bottle over the shoulder.’  Marching on the order of a cornet, with a Romanian and a blue & white flag flying.

I hope that we can summon the energy, courage, hope, and strength of the Romanian fusgeyer as we walk forward in this year’s Exodus, heads held high, walking as a community, and singing together along the way.

Shabbat Shalom.

Aftermath of Obama visit to Israel

The Committee for Accuracy on Middle Eastern Reporting shared an interesting article about the views of Palestinians of East Jerusalem.  Once again, we find that to get the real story on Israel, and the Israel-Palestinian situation, we must look beyond the headlines, read multiple sources, and be wary of media bias.

March 25, 2013

USA Today Gets It Mostly Right

USA Today’s “Palestinians not optimistic about Obama’s agenda” (March 20) reminded readers that many Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem wouldn’t want to live in a Palestinian state. Overall, the article was a relatively rare example of a major news outlet including essential context in an Israeli-Palestinian report.

Reporters Michele Chabin and Vanessa O’Brien noted “a recent survey conducted by Pechter Middle East polls showed that 35 percent of East Jerusalem residents said that in any two-state solution, they would prefer to live in Israel, while 30 percent preferred to live in a Palestinian state.” In addition, the survey “showed that 40 percent would prefer to move to Israel if their neighborhood [of Jerusalem] became part of Palestine.”

While only five percent of Jerusalem Arabs have opted for Israeli citizenship since 1967, the number applying to change their permanent resident status to citizen is rising, one resident of eastern Jerusalem told USA Today.

The dispatch also:

* Refers accurately to Hamas, which targets Israeli non-combatants and takes cover among the Gaza Strip’s civilian population, as a terrorist group that desires to eliminate Israel instead of calling it a “militant” organization, and

* In the print edition correctly describes the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City, not the adjoining Western Wall, as Judaism’s holiest site. The longer, updated online version muddies the language in this regard. (CAMERA has obtained numerous corrections from media that have erroneously termed the Wall the most sacred physical location for Jews.) By accurately describing the importance of Temple Mount to Jews, USA Today’s print report helps clarify why the site is a source of contention.

The article does err by saying that Israel’s West Bank security barrier and checkpoints “bar all but a few thousand Palestinians from accessing jobs, universities and hospitals in Israel.” The Israeli foreign ministry reports that last year more than 200,000 West Bank and Gaza Strip Arabs, patients and accompanying family members, were permitted to seek hospital treatment in Israel, and the Associated Press said recently that approximately 40,000 West Bank residents now are authorized to work in Israel, up from virtually none during the second intifada (2000 – 2005).

The newspaper commendably published a clarification in this regard in its March 25 print edition .

A reference to the “right of return for all Palestinians and their descendants to live in what is now Israel” should have been to the “alleged right of return …” No such right exists, as indicated by the early U.N. General Assembly resolutions on the subject, 194 (1948); 393 (’50); 394 (’50); and 513 (’52). That’s one reason Arab delegations voted against them at the time.

But overall, “Palestinians not optimistic about Obama’ s agenda” provides readers with important information routinely ignored in other major media. – Andy Wallin, CAMERA Washington research intern.

From Beyond the Parochet, The Screen...Terumah Dvar 2013/5773

Dvar Torah Terumah

2013/5773

Behind the ‘Screen’

There is the story of a time of drought,

And one gentleman decided to give a dinar to a poor person on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.  His wife became upset with him and he left to sleep in a cemetery where he heard two spirits speaking to one another.  One of those spirits wished to travel ‘behind the pargod, the screen’ to find out what misfortune would come to the world.

The screen is the veil that separates God from the world, or as Rashi puts it, between the Ruler and the people.

Harry Potter fans may recall the gate of the ‘veil’ in the Department of Mysteries, the one way door between the world of the living and the dead.  A person can hear only muffled voices from behind the veil, and Harry’s godfather Sirius Black gets taken into the other world during a battle there.

There is a darkness about these two stories, one from the Talmud, one from popular literature of our day.  They suggest that the separation wall between our world and the ‘other world’ is one that we cross to discover misfortune or death.  But mystery need not be negative, nor scary.  Separation between the world of the Divine and human can increase curiosity and wonder.  It can set appropriate boundaries that keep us at a safe distance from the harm of approaching too close to a world that we should not ‘see’ with our own eyes.

God instructs the Israelites to create a parochet, a screen, to cordon the Holiest spot in the Mishkan – the Tabernacle – the portable sanctuary we carry through the wilderness for 40 years.  This screen reminds the priests to respect this most holy place, a place that even the high priest may not enter but one day a year, Yom Kippur, to cleanse and atone sins. 

There are many days when God feels distant, hidden away behind the screen and inaccessible.  We, our loved ones, and friends struggle with relationships, health, any number of life challenges that bury us in sadness, loss, pain, disillusionment.  We want to find compassion from God, a sense of peace that we desperately lack in these moments and every effort to grasp some sign or signal that there is order beyond the chaos amounts to nothing.

While we cannot enter the Mind of God, we can allow our inner voice, the unscripted natural reaction of ourselves to living in a world that is filled with God’s invisible Presence and energy, we can allow this voice to help us, to potentially help us…

Guided Meditation:  Let’s take a moment to breathe, to release tension of the past week, eyes open or closed, hands on lap, let random thoughts that come up move to the side of your mind until we’re done, picture a room – a room with a screen or curtain in the middle, hiding the area behind it, you cannot see behind the screen, but you feel a warmth, you feel a Presence, you are not alone, what does the screen look like? Color? Design? Texture? Thickness? See it from top  to bottom.  Without saying anything out loud here, see yourself speaking toward the screen or sending a thought of a challenge in life you are facing toward the screen and through it – see the words or thoughts as light moving forward and thru the fabric, what color are the thoughts?  Wait a moment to allow all the light to go through the screen.  A voice, more than a whisper but not a loud sound, speaks back through the screen or unworded thoughts come to you.  An answer.  Hear the response carefully and repeat it to yourself, once, twice, three times…hear it…hold onto it…

Let’s slowly return to this room, notice your breathing, feel feet on the floor. Anyone like to share re: screen, color of thoughts, did the answer you receive surprise you-did you get an answer?

My prayer is that we may hear God’s voice buzzing throughout the world and that the screen that shades the Divine from the human does not prevent words and wisdom from coming across, from the world of pure energy to the world of matter, from the world of mystery into the world we know best where the experience of the present can be opaque and disheartening, but where we can have courage to look beyond and find new sources of help and inspiration.

Shabbat Shalom.

Beshalach & Tu Bishevat - Trees After the Storm

Dvar Torah Beshalach 5773/2013

(Tu Bishevat)

Many of us here, given the series of gale force winds, rain, and ice storms that have hit our region the last several years, must feel some ambivalence about the very trees that shade our homes and lawns, the trees that create a green pergola of continuous natural beauty down the sidewalks and streets of our towns.  This ambivalence comes from the ways that some of these trees, that we assume are dependable in their roots, trunks, and branches have toppled over onto our homes, threatening our lives and the lives of our children inside, taking life, ripping up the sidewalks, pulling down electrical wires – cutting off power to our homes, littering and sometimes closing down the streets. 

For me, this ambivalence is unsettling.  I find myself looking up from time to time as I walk through town, listening for the sound of a cracking branch while walking or strolling with my kids.

For our ancestors, walking through the miraculous walls of water to the right and to the left, watching God’s power overwhelm the mighty Egyptian army at the Sea, they also must feel at least some ambivalence – the Torah notes that they take special note of the Egyptians lying dead on the shore, and the unsettling fear that accompanies the moment, that God’s power – energy without mass, no ‘Visible’ originator of the Power is apparent -  is total and has the ability to create as well as to destroy.

“Vayar Yisrael et ha’yad ha’gedolah asher asah Ado—nai be mitzrayim, Va’yi’re’u ha’am et Ado—nai…”.

‘The people saw the results of God’s might in what God did to the Egyptians, and the people feared God….’(Exodus 14:31)

To be sure, a song of triumph and celebration follows, and Miriam leads women in dances with drums and timbrels, but first the Israelites, then the peoples of the region are filled with terror just as the Israelites – In Philistia, in Edom, in Moav they are shaking with fear.  The Canaanites ‘melt’ in their fear.

We might see a silver lining here, that fear braces us and makes us aware in a straightforward and immediate way.  In the case of the trees, that we celebrate on this Tu Bishevat – 15^th of Shevat – New Year for Trees, our experiences sharpen our awareness of our surroundings and we take measures to protect ourselves.  In the case of the Israelites, their fear leads to deeper belief.

The people ‘feared God’ and ‘Vaya’aminu bAdo—nai uvmoshe Avdo.’  The sentence we began ends with, ‘And they believed in Ado—nai and Moses God’s servant.’

Their fear leads to trust of both the Divine and human leaders.  Fear, ambivalence, worry, and wonder.

Efforts on the trees of late have focused on prevention of future problems.  This mindset also informs the current debates on gun violence – How can we prevent future gun violence.

The storms and their aftermath though leave us with the feeling that there are weak points in the world, places where we find we cannot rely on the very things that seemed for so long to give us strength, comfort, and continuity.

If we can draw a lesson from the trees of our towns, it could be that the physical trees themselves are great for their beauty and contribution to the environment, but are not the things into which we should put our lasting trust and belief.  It is tempting always to favor the physical, the concrete, to lean on and believe in what we can see and touch, into something we may have planted and nurtured ourselves.

What our faith reminds us to do though is to put our belief in  a tree whose roots are invisible but deep and binding to our community, a tree whose fruit is wisdom and guidance in the form of words, lessons, stories, holy times, rituals and traditions, a tree that has weathered thousands of years of storms, fires, and terror and lives on – can you guess which tree I’m thinking of?

Etz Ha’chayim, the Tree of life Etz Chayim hi lamachazikim bah, ve’tomcheha me’ushar.’ The Torah is a tree of life to those who hold fast, all who support it are happy.’

(Sing…)