25 April 2023
We Must Still Will It, or It Will Be No Dream
11 July 2022
Work Gods
I finally got around to reading a fascinating piece forwarded to me by a Temple Sholom congregant from the New York Times, entitled "When Your Job Fills in for Your Faith, That's a Problem" by Dr. Carolyn Chen.
I was reminded of a High HolyDay sermon series that my father gave decades ago at Temple Beth El in Somerville. He brought up how people exercise (in those ancient days, he noted playing tennis, not pickleball) "religiously" and wondered what the metaphor meant when people no longer practiced their religion religiously. (I personally have always been fascinated by the American mindset that takes a spiritual practice like yoga, culturally appropriates it into an exercise practice, and then re-spiritualizes it as a spiritual discipline.)
The article talks about how people's free time that they previously gave to religious and service communities is now taken up by work (without even mentioning how e-mail has put everyone to work 24/7) but emphasizes how companies have built up work cultures that fill particular personal needs that religious communities have heretofore filled, such as personal fulfillment and a moral framework. I am reminded of certain drugs that fit into dopamine receptors in the brain that mimic natural body processes of feedback, that create shortcuts that lead to addiction and cut off healthy response. The piece mentions what happens when a person who has found this type of faith community in their work moves on to another job, and the loss of support. I would argue that one of the points of a faith community is not just to find a place to strengthen your moral code, but also to find people outside of the other cohorts of your life (in different fields, of different ages, in different life situations) to balance the mono-cultures in which we may find ourselves for the majority of our weekday hours. It is tough to find support for losing your job from the people you no longer work with and see everyday, all day.
The more insidious aspect is the creep of workplaces consciously proselytizing themselves as sources of purpose and meaning in life. Certainly, it is hoped that as many of us as possible can find meaning in our employment, and even feel that what we are doing makes the world a better place and is good for others as well as ourselves. However, most work is for companies that, in the end, need to turn a profit or benefit their shareholders. Even in the non-profit world, there is still a bottom line in the budget. The ideal may be benefiting the world, but the paycheck is still slave to the means to do so. For many, the idea of volunteering - of giving without getting any money back - is actually a welcome change, and needful contrast to the daily grind. We must also lift up those who work long hours, with little rest, in unpaid positions - giving care to family members - who may find the chance to volunteer outside of home and family a welcome breath of fresh air and a place to have different conversations with different people.
We talk a great deal about "work/life balance" as if the two are opposed. Perhaps companies have begun to respond to this dialectic by coopting life into work. We need not hold the two as opposites, but we can also spend the time to find communities of purpose (and faith) that give us other ways to engage than those we are being compensated for.
02 May 2022
Made Up God
It has been a while since I last posted here. I want to get back to sharing what congregants have shared with me, to broaden conversations, especially those that help us and give life, rather than diminish it.
Susan Sedwin shared with me this morning, an Op-Ed from the New York Times by Scott Hershovitz, which you can find here. I had also read it this morning and thought about God, and how we discuss God,* as well as thinking rather positively about how we teach God here at Temple Sholom.
Michelle and I have a difference of approach. When someone tells her, "I don't believe in God," she follows up with the question, "Exactly which God do you not believe in?" On the other hand, when someone tells me they are more of an atheist, I ask if they are a strict a-theist (and do not believe in a theistic God - one who created the world and answers individual petitions or prayers) or not? Usually this leads to a longer conversation, as many members of the congregation can tell you - one or two of which has extended the conversation to a regular lunch habit.
Thoughts like these are what led us to make theology (and God) a central topic of our Temple Sholom trimester curriculum. We spend one trimester of our four holiness trimesters on the holiness of God. Why? The story that I like to tell is that when we just teach Bible stories, or the simplified versions often found in older textbooks, students develop what I call the "third grade idea of God". You can all fill in the details - throne, big white beard, book with everything written inside. This God is formulaic - do good, get reward; do bad, get punishment, with some leniency for those who pray well. Mature observation of the world around us leads us (as it led our Biblical ancestors who placed this question in the book of Job) to the question that Hershovitz and his son raise - theodicy (If God is good AND all-powerful, then why is there evil?).
Therefore, if the only understanding of God that Judaism provides for you is the simplistic and you challenge its premise, your obvious conclusion is not to believe in God. However, our ancestors, and Judaism as a whole, have had many different understandings of God (all gathered under the umbrella that the entity behind the word "God" is beyond our human understanding) that often tell us more about the person theologizing than the object of their philosophy. Arthur Waskow coins the term "Godwrestling" to lift up the Jewish idea - from the very beginning in the book of Genesis - that we are named Israel after a literal struggle with humanity and God that our ancestor Jacob experienced. I also commend again the work of my classmate and college, Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer, who talks about engaging (The) God (of Your Understanding). So, we teach different theologies to kindergartners - because who knows when their personal theology will be challenged and they need to know that they are still comfortably within the bounds of Judaism, or that there are many ways to understand and struggle with the Divine?
Back to Hershovitz, who propounds a "fictionalist" theology - that we know God is not real, but believing in God makes/challenges us to make the world a better place, and helps us live our lives, so we might as well believe or act as if we believe. I cannot say that is too different from my own theology, although I would never call it fictional. As human beings, we have created the words and concepts by which we order the world. Even when we analyze and quantify natural laws, we doing so with our own symbols and logic. All of it is fictive, created. I do not know for sure about the God who created the universe in which I dwell. Yet, it is here and, miraculously, I dwell in it. For that I am thankful, and will continue to search for meaning and believe that if given a gift, my responsibility is to extend that gift to others, while doing what little I can to make it better for all. I call that a real Jewish theology.
*I use the term "God" here as a pronoun, referring to a concept that we all may not agree on exactly. "God" is not God's name, and has no holiness in and of itself, only in the meaning that we give it.
01 November 2020
Planning Ahead for a Moment of Civic Healing
I was asked to write an article for the Union County Clergy Interfaith Coordinating Council November newsletter, which was themed "Reconciliation".
I am currently in a Doctor of Ministry program at Drew University Theological School. In our introduction to the Doctor of Ministry course, we were invited to collaborate to create a public witness or liturgy. This public witness or liturgy had to confront a contemporary issue, give participants time to reflect, as well as provide an impetus and invitation to growth and change. With five classmates, Revs. David Clark, Laurel O’Connor, Mia Sloan, Tirzah Turner, and Ellen Witko, and myself, Rabbi Joel N. Abraham, we created a Multi-faith Meditation for Civic Healing After the National Election. It was obvious to us, no matter what the results of our upcoming November election, there would be a need for healing on all sides, and we hoped to provide a template for a liturgical moment to bring people together.
As Rev. O’Connor stated in the introduction, we strove to invite voices not only of different faith traditions, but also to create a space that would welcome those of different political views, whom might have different feelings at the results, or even if there was turmoil and results were not yet clarified:
The day after an election day is filled with stark contrasts. Within one national context, there are people who are mourning, and people who are celebrating. There are people who are angry, and people who are joyful. There are people who are confused and disillusioned, and people who are feeling triumphant and victorious.
One question we asked ourselves when coming to a multi-faith space of healing and hope was “how do we keep this service from being unbalanced?” In our context, we are a mostly Christian group, with a Reform Jewish Rabbi, that does not want to appropriate other traditions’ prayers without their consent or participation.
But that question can be extended even further to political thought and doctrine, so I will repeat it again: “How do we keep a service of healing from being unbalanced?” We want to be clear: difference isn’t something to sweep under the rug in hopes of homogeneity. Whether it’s politics or religion, we find hope in the fact that diversity creates a beautiful tapestry of thought and belief across our landscape.
Our service (the text and video of which are provided in links below) began with a contemplative prayer, and included prayers from African, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian tradtion. The idea was not to be comprehensive, but to provide a model, so that other communities might bring in the prayers of their own members, or those they wished to lift up. We acknowledged at the beginning that we asked our participants to bring prayers from their own faiths. We knew that such a practice might make those of different faiths uncomfortable, but made clear that we were presenting and offering prayer, not forcing others to pray with or in the manner that we might offer. We appreciate that it is often easier and more authentic for prayer leaders to use the tropes and words of their own tradition, rather than try to find a neutral medium that avoids offending anyone, but also often fails to inspire.
From the Jewish tradition, I offered two prayers. The first was gomeil - the prayer that is offered upon returning safely to the community by a person who has experienced a traumatic experience - such as illness, or a difficult journey. This prayer gives the one who prays the opportunity not only to give thanks, in front of the community, for having survived, but also gives the community the opportunity to echo that thanks, and share their own gratitude. The second prayer was a prayer for our country. Traditionally, this is one of the only prayers that is expected to be in the vernacular, rather than in Hebrew. The prayer is meant to be transparent - not only to the worshippers, but to the outside community, so that the congregation is known to be patriotic and loyal. This formulation (from L’chol z’man v’eit - the Reform Movement of Judaism’s order of prayer for clergy) combines the calls for justice from the Torah (“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” - Deut. 16:20 and “Proclaim liberty throughout the land.” - Lev. 25:10) which are part of our American lexicon, but also words from the Declaration of Independence (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) while calling for all of us to do our parts to maintain our democracy and thanking those who have risked or given their lives for those values.
The liturgy that we created was a collaborative offering - an offering to the moment that we see quite clearly in the road ahead. We do not know what will happen in November, but we do know that we face a choice about going forward. We can come together again as a nation - recognizing that we may live in different Americas, but our dream of equity and justice for all is the same, or we can continue to put our own needs over others, and segment our fragile democracy into shards of former freedom. The challenge is ours - how we decide to meet that challenge will determine not only our own futures, but those of our children, and those around the world.
As the prayer for the nation that I shared concluded, “We pray for .wisdom and moral strength,that we may be guardians of these rights for ourselves and for the sake of all people,
now and forever.” Amen.
The video template of this service can be found here - https://bit.ly/2SELuiO - and the texts here - https://bit.ly/2SFXiS7
Rabbi Joel N. Abraham
Temple Sholom of Scotch Plains
UCICC Board Member
12 September 2017
Standing in the Rain/Speaking Truth to Power
As always, I find Brooks to be knowledgeable and willing to go beyond the surface level in his thinking - especially in areas concerning morality. While the texts about Noah are not new to me - and hopefully not new to our congregants (I've cited them a few times in classes and sermons.) - he does explain them well and they are very useful to bring forward.
Rabbinic commentary goes back and forth about Noah. As a human being in an extraordinary situation, there is sympathy for what he is able to do. On the other hand, with the benefit of hindsight, the comparison with Abraham (vis a vis standing up to God to reconsider the punishment) is highly critical. I view this dichotomy with one lens and two lessons. The stories that have been preserved for us in Jewish text are those that we are meant to learn from.
The first lesson is that we should show compassion and understand the humanity of others. Our tradition has a concept that what might be proper to say before someone makes a decision, might not be the right words after the decision is in the past. We have guidelines on how to behave - prescriptively; and then a process for repentance (t'shuvah) when we realize that we may have made the wrong decision. We act with sympathy, even if we disagree with the decision.
The second lesson, that Brooks brings out, is that we are called upon, by our tradition, to speak up for others. Abraham becomes a model for that - compared with both Noah and Abraham's nephew, Lot. They are not condemned by the text. Rather, Abraham is held up, in that instance, as a better model.
Brooks' takes this argument in a bit of a different direction - that the lesson is that we must not blindly accept ANY authority. Remember, as we will read next week at Rosh haShanah, Abraham later follows God's command to offer his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, without an explicit word of protest. (Rabbinic commentary does attempt to find an implied argument in God's detailed description of who is to be sacrificed.) Living under Roman authority and trying to find a way to justify a Jewish Rabbinic authority at the same time, the Rabbis walked a tightrope. I would read the more nuanced idea that we should not blindly follow authority that acts in contradiction to the morals that we have been taught to not only espouse, but bring into the world.
An early shanah tovah to you all.
*Update - Natalie Darwin also called to let me know about this article.
02 May 2017
Israel, Thy Very Name is Struggle - Yom haAtzma'ut 5777
For millennia, our people have lived by the oft-repeated Biblical exhortation to remember that we were strangers in Egypt, and to empathize with those not in power; who felt like strangers in their own land. Without political and state power, there was little to put this maxim to the test. For the past 69 years, Israel has given us the blessing of a real, physical homeland - a source of pride and the ultimate redoubt for our people. However, we have also been given the opportunity to apply the politics of minority to the power of the nation-state. In many ways, we have succeeded. Israel is a democracy, surrounded by dictatorship. Yet, not only does the shadow of religious fundamentalism tinge the democracy of its Jewish citizens, but the increasing insularity of the Jewish populace continues to encroach on the rights of all the non-Jews - citizen and non-citizen alike - who find themselves sheltered with Israel's borders.
This year is also the fiftieth anniversary of the miraculous victory of the Six-Day War, which brought with it the dubious benefit of increased territory and a vast refugee Arab population. When its neighbors washed their hands of responsibility, Israel became the breeding ground for a Palestinian resistance - one which dominates the political landscape of Israel - both within its pre-1967 borders and without. The miraculous underdog of 1967 and 1973 is now perceived as the bully of the Intifada. Israel has failed to find a solution for the Arab population that it finds itself in control of, and we are being changed in ways that only a few (Moshe Dayan, for example) imagined. Force and repression have become our only tools.
The Palestinians, separated now by name from the rest of the Arabs in the Middle East, have become the underdogs. Americans, always sympathetic to the underdog, are torn. Many American Jews turn away from an active engagement with Israel because the situation is too divisive, too fraught with difficult moral issues, so different from the David and Goliath story of 1948, 1967, and 1973.
Yet, today is Yom haAtzma'ut. Atzma'ut - independence - comes from the root ayin-tzadi-mem - which is not only the self-reflexive term in Hebrew, but is also the root for "bone". Israel is in our bones. We, as Jews, no matter what our genetic origin, pray for the peace of Israel at every service, and long to return to mythic Jerusalem at every seder. We cannot ignore our connection with Israel, lest we lose our backbone, our support and structure.
We are Israel - those who struggle with God and with humanity; nowhere more evident than in the modern state of Israel. Right struggles with left; Ultra-Orthodox with Reform and Conservative; Ashkenazic with Sephardi/Mizrachi/Indian/Ethiopian; Jew with Arab; Diaspora with Sabra. The struggle is not new. Judaism teaches us that - but also that we engage in the struggle with certain values to guide us - love your neighbor as yourself; help even your enemy with his fallen burden; and treat the stranger as the native. The passage in Genesis says that Jacob not only struggle with God and with humanity, but that he prevailed. Prevailing is not necessarily winning. Let us hope that we, too, can find a way to prevail - a way that preserves not only our own rights and dignity, but those of the ones we, today, find as enemies. Then we can truly live up to the name which has been bequeathed to us by the generations - Yisra'eil.
30 January 2017
Hevel, Hevel, haKol Hevel and I'm Not Sure What's New under the Sun
Since last week, I've decided to keep it to hand in my car.
I had a congregant angry at me yesterday because I did not tell her in the morning that I would be speaking at an immigration support rally that afternoon. That morning, I did not know.
Last Thursday, I attended a meeting of statewide clergy to talk about the sanctuary movement and how I could help to keep people from being deported. I learned at that meeting that a man that I had helped to keep from deportation three years before was now being called in for an emergency meeting with ICE. Two days later, my colleagues and friends were demonstrating at airports all over the country to let people with valid papers who had already arrived leave airport detention. The next day, I marched with groups focussing on both issues - "No Ban, No Wall."
Many of the faces that I am seeing at these meetings and rallies are those of people I have met in local interfaith groups, testifying for marriage equality in New Jersey, organizing for reproductive rights, rallies against hate. Are we preaching to the choir, or is it strengthening to standing with stalwart companions?
I am also seeing congregants, colleagues, college and high school classmates, former congregants, parents of my children's friends, old youth groupers. Faces that are new in these places are a joy to behold.
On Facebook, there is live video feed from friends all over the country chanting and marching in separate places, together.
Today I had a phone call with an organizer I have worked with in the past and all that kept running through my head was that the old organizational math was no longer valid. What used to add up now subtracts, and the rules of the political game seem to be quaint memories.
I do not know what to do - and I have spent a life time learning.
I do not know what is next - and each news item spins me in another direction.
Kohelet, the voice of the book of Ecclesiastes begins by saying, "Hevel, hevel, ha kol hevel" - the King James' Bible translates this as "Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity!". The new Jewish Publication Society as "Utter futitilty!" Mist, unsubstantial mist - we are tilting at shadows, sparring with ghosts.
And yet, the book ends, in what I would argue, is a fourth-wall breaking wink, "The making of many books is without limit, and much study is wearying of the flesh." We can only rail in our libraries for so long and then the time comes to put down the book and go out into the world.
You'll find me out in the cold. I hope you join me there. We'll warm each other with the fire of righteousness.
16 October 2016
The Collateral Damage of Love-Bombing
Black, Jewish And Avoiding The Synagogue On Yom Kippur
My second is to say to Leah Donnella, "Please come back. The organized Jewish community is not so good at this, but we are really trying to get better. If you have the strength, we'd love for you to teach us how to do better."
My third, upon reflection, is to remember a story from our own congregation that comes from a different vector, but really illustrates the same problem.
When I came to our small suburban New Jersey congregation almost twenty years ago, we thought we were a very welcoming congregation. The truth was that we really were not so good - for very real, human reasons. A ninety year-old congregation of around two hundred families, our members did not actually know each other that well. Most members knew some other members, but they did not know everyone. Therefore, on a given Friday night, one member might be reluctant to introduce themselves to someone else at the oneg (the after service fellowship), because they feared embarrassment in showing their ignorance in not recognizing a long-term member. People who were guests, because members assumed they were long-term members they just did not know, were not welcomed or sometimes even spoken to. The bright shining exception was the day a black woman walked into services. Immediately, she was surrounded by well-meaning congregants who wanted to show her how the prayerbook worked, introduce themselves, explain the blessings before we ate the oneg cookies, and on and on. [Thank you to April Baskin, VP of Audacious Hospitality from the Union for Reform Judaism for informing me that this sometimes intrusive and overbearing behavior is called "love-bombing".] I imagine the thought process went, "Well, she's black, so she's not Jewish, so she's not a member, so, thank God, I can welcome her and show us how nice and welcoming we really are." Thank God, she was not Jewish - otherwise she might have been having exactly the same reaction and experience that Ms. Donnella recounts in the article above. My point - even though we were attempting from the bottom of our hearts to be well-meaning and welcoming - our assumptions might often give the opposite effect.
The sad truth is that Jews who do not fit the internal stereotype are often supposed not to be Jews by the Ashkenazic majority present in the synagogue. The reality is that Jews never have and certainly not in today's America all look the same. We should have learned from my great-aunt Mary that there are many people in our community without Jewish sounding names - now reflected in Hendersons, McNallys, Wangs, and Christiansens listed on our membership rolls. Jews with Asian ancestry have been telling us for a generation that when they walk in the synagogue and show some familiarity or expertise with Jewish practice others assume that they were adopted or converted to Judaism. I even admit, as a rabbi, that from the bimah, I have to remind myself when I speak of Jews and our relationship with the African-American community that it is not us and them, but that there are some of us who are both.
[I just interrupted typing this post to step out of my office, this Sunday morning, as I listened to a teacher teaching about American Jewish history, say, "Most of our ancestors came from Russia" to change that to "Many of us", and mention ancestors of all different types from all different places, some Jewish, some not.]
We have a long way to go - and there are some who, justifiably, may have neither the patience for us to change, the fortitude to help us make the necessary change, or the forbearance to deal with those who have not yet heard or will not change.
We - all of us - Jews of all backgrounds - can only try to do what we should in most situations - live up to the dictum to love your neighbor as yourself, by truly placing ourselves in their perspectives. We need to ask ourselves, how is what we say, in the best of intentions, being heard? Because we truly want to be welcoming, not to push people away.
10 August 2016
Do Not Let Baseless Hatred Destroy Our Society
11 September 2015
We Must Speak Out against ALL Terrorism (Even When It Hurts)
Sadly, regarding some American Jews living in Israel, I believe it is.
I lived in Israel and was there the Purim that Baruch Goldstein opened fire on innocent Arabs. That year, I had a large beard and looked American. Every time I went into the Mashbir (the big department store in downtown Jerusalem) and other stores, the security guards would look at me and ask if I was carrying a gun - as many of the settlers did and still do.
Don't get me wrong, there are many American (and other nationality) Jews living beyond the green line, in territory captured by Israel in 1967, who are good people - and would never dream of carrying out a "price tag" attack. Yet, even in those communities, even twenty years ago, I heard the demonization of the Arab population; the children taught to think of their neighbors as "other", not quite the same, dangerous.
There are those who move to this Israeli frontier with the goal of making the land a permanent part of Israel, and to whom the current inhabitants are an infestation, and who need to be encouraged (however strongly) to leave.
We cannot stand silent when such violent acts are perpetrated by others in our name. We cannot allow Judaism - the religion and culture that we hold dear - to be used as an excuse to attack others, to terrorize, to burn families out of their homes.
This is not Judaism. I stand with the President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. These are crimes, and those who carry out these actions are terrorists - and should be treated in the same way that the state of Israel treats all terrorists (and if that leads to a re-examination of those policies, so much the better).
The path to peace and safety for all is not through violence and escalation. We should be ashamed of this New York Times Op-Ed - because it had to be said, and we should be loud in our denunciation of such acts as well.