Monday, April 27, 2009

Acharei Mot...Kedoshim. After Death there is Holiness

In parasha Acharei Mot, God gives Moses a whole set of instructions to give to Aaron after the death of his two sons. The Parasha linked with this portion is Kedoshim. Holiness. When we say the names together-we have After the Death-Holiness. This work-linkage is interesting in translation and brings a new perspective to these texts (Thanks to this week's D'var Tzedek from AJWS for this little nugget).

I sat today at length and spoke with Clark, a gentleman of great Christian faith who works at HUC. We were talking about faith and how people SHOULD rely on their faith to get them through the tough stuff. I asked the following question of Clark because I wanted to understand if he had tested this theory so I said, Clark, I am not asking what the experiences are, but have you known suffering? I did not mean it to sound like a challenge in anyway-it was really a clarifying question.

He paused a long and heavy pause. And said yes. He began talking about Jesus again and then said, I had a daughter who died in a fire when she was five...that was about 12 years ago...she had third degree burns everywhere...they had her all wrapped up in gauze and all I could see were her little toes and her eyes...she was like a mummy...she was doing better and then worse...

I lost it when he talked about her toes. All I could see were these gauzy feet with this little, tiny toes sticking out. I imagined Clark loving those toes with such intensity and joy...

When she died I blamed her mother for being careless...I should have a 17 year old girl now...and it took me a long time to get over it...and finally I found the faith and I let it go...

Tears all over my face, a smile all over his. He reflecting on God, me on loss.

Somehow...somehow Clark came to understand these words...
After death...holiness

And I thought about Aaron losing his sons and I said a little prayer that one day he too came to know holiness too.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Dignity Dollars Part 2-When Public and Private Meet

My Dignity Dollars have been advancing (and I am running out of change). Dignity Dollars is the spare change I keep in a Smucker's Jam jar right by my front door so that when I go out, I can grab so change to give to people who are asking. Here is how I see it. It seems like a pretty miserable situation to have to ask people for help. Even people who are exploiting the system must be in some pretty bad shape at least psychologically to be begging. The amount I give is so nominal but what I hope I am handing out is dignity and respect. The loose change in my pocket gives me an opportunity to look someone in the eye, hand them a little bit of change and talk with them. See them. Not leave them alone. It drives me nuts when someone is begging on the Subway, for example, and people will not even LOOK at them. I think about when I have to get the courage up to ask for help. It is scary and makes me so vulnerable. To ask someone else for help and have them openly IGNORE me...well that just adds insult to injury in my book.

So lately, here is what I have been learning about the power of harnessing a community in doing justice. Somehow this is applicable to life in a congregation and I am not sure how...please comment, I need some assistance making the connections.

A story from yesterday: I was riding the 4/5 express towards Queens from Brooklyn coming home from services. I had my DD (Dignity Dollars) in my pocket. White fleece jacket, jeans, baby-blue back pack on. A late-middle-aged black man with big bifocal (think Mr. Magoo) glasses stepped on at Brooklyn Bridge. He was wearing a Mr. Roger's sweater, khaki pants, navy coat (a bit worse for the wear). Not your obvious homeless type. He began his pitch. He had lost his home in the economic down turn. Please help. Anything is appreciated-food, money anything. He even asked for fruit (no one asks for fruit-most of the chronically homeless cannot eat fruit because of lack of teeth or diabetes...I am not including this because I doubt the veracity of his claim, I do believe this man had no home of his own. His appearance spoke to a newness to his situation).

People looked away. I have come to decide that my DD can buy more than dignity from me but from others. When he finished his ask, I strode towards him and said, excuse me sir, I have some for you. People looked up. I struck up a conversation with him. He told some of his story. A man standing near us (also a respectable-looking type guy) joined in, slipping a bill or to into Mr Rogers/Magoo's hand. When we concluded our talk other said excuse me sir, here is something. Bills started come out. Seven or eight people held out a hand with paper money in it. The man collected. We arrives at the next subway stop. He said goodbye, and was gone.

The whole exchange is not very Maimonidean. It is very public. I feel uncomfortable. But the result seems to be worth it...

There is something to be said about the spirituality of the exchange (by spirituality I mean connecting to that sense of there being something greater than I am out there). Doing all that reminds me how small I am but that I am connected to every other person on that train and in the world and that makes me part of something HUGE.

A good fortune in an empty Well-Shemini 2009

This is a Passover Story of Redemption and forgiveness but for it to be complete, I need your help. You have to hear me confess what happened in this story.

Not only am I the Rabbinic intern at Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, I am also, a daughter with a mother. And like daughters with mothers will sometimes do, I tease and make fun of mine.

For Passover, I went to Boston to spend some time with my family. It was a lovely trip and it was wonderful to see everyone including my grandmother who sends her regards, especially to you, Rabbi Lippe. During one of the non-seder dinner nights, my parents,grandmother and I ordered in Chinese food. Not to worry-no rice or noodles could be found anywhere. We did, however, forget to tell the Asian Sun Chinese Restaurant in Cambridge not to send the fortune cookies. So, in true Reform Jewish style, we debate the permissibility of having the cookies on the table and in the end decided to not eat them, but merely open them for our fortunes.

When the meal was over and fortune-reading time came, my mother sprang up from the table and said, oh good,I'll get the fortune book. "The fortune book? What ridiculous thing is this, Mom?" She returned with a small, red, 5x7 album with pages and pages of little plastic slots for fortune cookie fortunes. She explained, my parents had gotten it when they had this really good fortune and they wanted to keep it.

"Where is that one I asked?" (Being the simple child) and my mother said, "well...we lost that one." My reply,
"And what was so great about that fortune that you needed to keep it?" (being the wicked child)
"Oh," my mother replied, "it said 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot."
Ironic. Funny. Cute.

I asked about all the other fortunes and where they had come from. I assumed they too all had stories of their own.
"I don't remember" she said "...I did not write it down..."
And being the child who did not even know what to say...I held my tongue.

"Well, let's all read these new ones and put them in the book."
I rolled my eyes at my mother, thinking the whole fortune-reading enterprise was foolish, anyway. They are just these silly phrases someone pulled off the internet and wrote on to little slips of paper. It's not like Torah or anything...or so I thought...

We all took turns reading our fortunes out loud. When it was my father's turn, he reads the following, "Learn Chinese: Ginger LiAhng"

More eye rolling.
He continued.
"The sky seems small if it is looked at from the bottom of the well...I don't get it" my father said.
I thought a moment and said, "well, I have an idea." "Begin your discourse" was my father's reply.

Now a brief time out from this story to tell another which my father and I had encountered earlier that day. Not only am I the Rabbinic intern at Brooklyn Heights and a daughter with a mother, I am also a rabbinic student with homework. And like rabbinic students with homework sometimes do, I worked on mine while on vacation. I had some sermons to read and so I read them with my dad.

One sermon included the following story from Pirkei Avot- Rabban Yochanan was dining with his studentson a festive day (perhaps it was passover) when he turned to one of his longest learning pupils, Rabbi Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus and said, "begin your discourse" but Rabbi Eliezer begged off saying, I cannot begin for I am like a well which cannot givemore water than has been poured in to it. So too I cannot offer words of Torah which you have not yet given me."My dad and I thought this was a bit of a jab by the student to the teacher especially at Passover...not unlike adaughter teasing her mother at the dinner table...but we read on. Rabbi Yochanan, the teacher said, "you are not a dry well, but a spring which gushes freely of water from within itself. Believe me, you are like such a spring. Now, begin your discourse." After more discussion, Rabbi Eliezer the student is convinced, opens his mouth and brilliant, new words of Torah poured out. (Pirkei D'rabbi Eliezer 1, Avot DeRabbi Natan 6, Gen. R. 42:1, Tanhumma B, Lech lcha)

Back to the fortune cookie.
"I don't get it. " My father said.
I thought a moment and said, "well, I have an idea." "Begin your discourse" was my father's reply.

"It's like the student in the story. He thinks he is a dry well and from where he stands, the sky is small, and far away, just like all the possibilities of what he might be able to do. But when his well is fed by a gushing stream, he floats up toward the top, and the sky appears bigger and bigger as all that is possible comes in to view."

My father thought for a minute and said, "Very Cool! I like that...let's put it in the book."

I smiled, sheepishly and said, "actually, can I have the fortune? I want to write a sermon about it..."

My mother, being the wise child, smiled, kissed me, and handed me the fortune.

At this season of renewal and spring time and passover,my we all be nourished and enriched by the springs which keep our wells full, floating us ever closer to the bright blue sky we finally saw today, keeping all the hope and possibilities in view of the bright futures which lay ahead.

Shabbat Shalom

Friday, April 17, 2009

In Honor of Gayle Hoffman z'l

If You Knew What I Knew
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.
You might think you're having fun
Rolling down the street,
Constantly forgetting something to eat.
Your pants are getting bigger
Your brain is getting smaller.
Why can't you just go home?
To a cousin
A brother
Your mother
My friend.
Don't end up like me.
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.

This story begins at the beginning of time and proceeds backwards and forwards, up and down, left and right. A time capsuled buried 28 years ago in Sudbury Massachusetts. My mother was 32, my father, 31, my brother Josh, 7, me 4, and Gayle, my foster sister was 12. She still lived with us then and had not yet been consumed by her life. The occasion was birchat hachammah-the sun celebration which we just commemorated again last week. Once every 28 years we on the earth and the sun stand facing each other in the same stance as we did at creation, at the dawn of time. Every 28 years we stand in the exact same places and begin a lengthy dance of near and far, facing and turned away all over again.

I remember her smell in the bathroom after she would shower, her skin darker than mine, hair straighter, eyes bigger. Yet to me, she was my sister. I knew no difference between her and any other "sister." I was too young to understand "foster" and "temporary."

I was 6 when they took her. I did not know then that they were DSS and that Gayle did not truly belong to us but was on loan to my family. But I understood I had lost something and that something was more than Gayle herself, but the future she might have had if she had stayed. What would have happened had Gayle never left?

28 years later we open the capsule. A letter written on a plain 3x5 index card in mother's handwriting lists our names and our ages as they should be now. Father 61, mother 62, brother 35, me 32 1/2, Gayle 40. Somehow part of and somehow apart from us-listed in the order we came to the family and not in the order we came to the world. As if, that is the center point, joining this family is the moment you become something...something whole...something found.

Gayle leaving at 13
Me not going to first grade-fear that once i left home, someone else would be gone for forever. We plan and things never quite go like they think they will. Like you go to school and plan everyone will be there when you get home. You plant a time capsule and think everyone

The article said she began hooking at 13 after she left us and went back to her mother who was supposed to be well enough mentally to raise a thirteen year old daughter.

The article said she began smoking crack at 14 maybe 15

The article said that the shooting happened 12 years ago. She was prostituting herself for $30 to buy drugs. It sounds like a bad after-school special when I tell it except she is not a fictional character, she is my lost sister. Lost to me, lost to our family, the center point, lost to herself...She John was a cop. It was not a sting, he was just a guy buying sex from a 28 year old with dark skin, dark hair, dark eyes eight days after graduating from the police academy. I imagine him feeling proud and powerful with his service revolver in hidden somewhere in his clothes, his new badge firmly clipped to his wallet, buying sex, walking the streets of Queens and into the home of a young woman. And when the moment arrived, his power and prowess failed him. The transaction a bust. No services rendered. The two of them next out on the street, he mocking him for his inabilities, him stumbling from the top of the world to the bottom of the deepest, darkest pit of shame, and embarassment. Suddenly the powerless prostitute is mocking the almighty police officer for what he could and could not do.

I'll teach you a to never disrespect anyone like that again he said, pulling the service revolver from its hiding place, shooting her in the neck and immediately she crumbled as her legs lost their functioning, her spinal cord seered into. In the street she laid, screaming wordless screams. Four more shots to her arms and legs. Irratic shooting of the demoralized in a vain attempt to regain his sense of balance, his place in the world, his strength.

She testified, he went to jail and a year later, she called. Quadraplegic from a nursing home. Her 2 sons now in the care of her brother, her tone optimistic, you were such a brat Rachael, she teased me. This ancient, happy voice on the other end of the line, my sister returned. That was 11 years ago. I was 21. Home from college. She was found but then I lost her again. No call ever returned, no visits ever made...

A time capsule dug up and a life unearthed. My mother reads the card today that she qrote 28 years ago and cries. Sad for those whose expectations were not met, for those whose lives did not extend the 28 year period as the earth and sun turned and rolled. A moment of blessing that we are all here. And then she goes looking, finding the story of Gayle. And then the finds the end of the tail.

"AN EX-COP imprisoned for shooting a prostitute who mocked him after he failed to perform sexually could be charged with her murder now that she has died eight years later, the Daily News has learned.

Gayle Hoffman was paralyzed in March 1996 when rookie transit cop Rolando Hernandez shot her just eight days after graduating from the Police Academy.

Hoffman, 34, died six months ago in a Long Island nursing home from illnesses directly related to her gunshot wounds, authorities said."

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2004/10/20/2004-10-20__ex-cop_may_pay_in_hooker_s_.html


"I could have adopted her" my mother wept. And now she is truly lost to the world.

If You Knew What I Knew
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.
You might think you're having fun
Rolling down the street,
Constantly forgetting something to eat.
Your pants are getting bigger
Your brain is getting smaller.
Why can't you just go home?
To a cousin
A brother
Your mother
My friend.
Don't end up like me.
If you knew what I knew
You'd want to walk away.
If you knew what I knew
You'd get on your knees and pray
If you knew what I knew
You'd thank the Lord everyday.

(Poem written by Gayle Hoffman)

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Google Maps-Form here to Egypt-Moving from Oppression to Redemption...and BACK again PART DEUX

Theory part two

  1. .The surveys say that Jews seem to be seeking more spirituality
  2. spirituality is an undefined amorphic silly word which gets batted about but I will steal a page from my friend and teacher, Rabbi Michael Friedman, and define it as whatever one's sense is of “I know there is something out there bigger than me and bigger than all of this.”
  3. Most Jewish institutions are hyper focused on the survival of the Jewish people and could perhaps, put some more focus and energy into shaping what and who the Jewish people are
  4. The Jewish people (say these surveys) want something more/other than prayer and free trips to Israel. We want God, Justice and Each other (I picked this up from Rabbi Sidney Schwartz at a recent Panim retreat weekend)
  5. For Jewish continuity to...well...continue....Jewish institutions may need to meet the needs of their constituents and do more than just keep GOING but keep GROWING. You know, moving closer to God and stuff like that.
  6. It's like we're so busy surviving as Jews, we're not really living as Jews...


So here is what I think we can do (one approach of many that I am working out in my head)

We use CBCO as a means to an end.
  1. CBCO builds strong communities which are self invested, intra connected, and just awesome (my read on this, no real evidence to site which supports this).
  2. With stronger CBC (Congregation Based Communities) I think we will find a greater sense of spirituality and a greater connection to the “what is out there” by being more connected to all that is right here
  3. Says Dr. Ochs, the spiritual guidance counselor at HUC (who I think does some amazing couples counseling between us and God) a greater sense of connection to each other will build a greater sense of connection to The Divine and the unity of all things (in a totally Jewish...though seemingly Buddhist....kind of way)
  4. By recognizing that we are all truly connected
  • we have a personal relationship with the oppressed no matter who what when where and how they are
  • we have a personal relationship with God and God pretty clearly seems to be in to this whole “end oppression” thing
  • We are being more and more recharged through spiritual means thus decreasing our need for recharge through consumer needs thus freeing up a whole big fat wad of time, money and energy for doing something else.
I see like this...we are all hurting and scared. We self protect by shutting down when maybe just maybe, we could survive more and better with less damage and more healing/growth and even thriving if we-especially when we want to close down...we simply open up....

See, changing the world may not be so hard after all.

“Excuse me, but, can you give me directions from Sinai to Egypt?” Moving from Oppression to Redemption...and BACK again-PART ONE

Here is the problem as I am coming to understand it.

Faith Based Community Organizing (FBCO) which encompasses Congregation Based Community Organizing (CBCO) aims to help communities to generate social change for themselves through establishing and harnessing its own relational power. No one empowers a community to do this, the community finds the power within themselves to generate social change.

This is awesome!! Jewish Congregations are well served by this model. Congregants come to know one another more intimately, more personally through an intensive process of one on one interactions where people share their stories, through house meetings where a shared vision for change is shaped based on the self interest of the members of the congregants, a plan is put in to action, action is taken, success is hopefully achieved.

Many FBCOs are uniting together to harness more relational power and are effective some powerful change communal and systemic changes.

This too is fabulous

The CBCOs (Jewish Congregations) are not signing on

How come? Here is the rub FBCOs and CBCOs are struggling to find a place of shared self-interest. The issues which keep members of FBCOs (often representing lower-middle and lower class communities) up at night are not the same issues which keep members of CBCOs (often representing middle, upper-middle and upper class communities) up at night. To put it plainly, as Jewish communities have made more money, we have shifting our care and concerns away from broader social issues. Quite frankly, we seem to care less about the little guy now that we are not him.

And I am especially struck by this at Passover where we say again and again, remember you were a slave in Egypt. It is central in our liturgy, on our holiday life cycle, in our Torah, and for good reason. Repeatedly we are reminded to not oppress the stranger because we too were strangers because we repeatedly seem to forget.

I am not judging us. This just seems to be an unpretty truth about how Jewish life in America seems to have evolved. And there are individuals who are exceptions (and are exceptional in all that they do) and congregations which are exceptions to the class distinction (I know, shocking, in fact all Jews do not have money) and congregations who have found shared self-interest with other communities and have made huge changes in our social structure. (I am thinking of Temple Israel in Boston, for example, and their work with health care workers because TI members wanted better health care for their parents.)

Here's the question...Torah and “Judaism” as a monolithic voice is pretty clear that we SHOULD care, be invested and fighting these fights. So, I am going to assume this point for now. HOW DO WE GET THERE?

Well, it is certainly not through yelling at people to care more although, that does feel satisfying...and wholly self-defeating.

Here is a burgeoning theory....
1.Generating social change involves personal sacrifice
2.Personal sacrifice...sucks for lack of a better word
3.We make personal sacrifice in spite of its inherent deficiency (the aforementioned sucking) because
1.the benefits of self sacrificing (which must be obvious, direct, and immediate) outweigh the discomfort and inconvenience of the sacrifice
2.the benefits of self sacrificing (which must be obvious, direct, and immediate) for someone else with whom we are in a real relationship outweigh the discomfort and inconvenience of the sacrifice
1.A relationship with a person
2.A relationship with an institution
3.A relationship with God (GASP, yes, a real relational experience of GOD!!)

Members of Jewish communities are totally willing to self-sacrifice. Hell, we do this all the time for the people we love and for ourselves. However, the changes we mak may be social changes, but it does not generally seem to be social-change.

It seems like something like this, we genocide in Darfur to end, for all Americans to receive and education, for everyone to have health care, for people not to die of AIDS, malaria and TB but at the end of the day, we're busy with work and family and carpools and deadlines and pressing emails and returning phone calls in areas of our lives we really value. And honestly, there is only so muchh time in the day, and there is only so much energy to spend. So we send checks when we can and we read the news and bear witness to the world's atrocities while we...well, if you will forgive the expression...stand idly by.

I mean, we worked so hard to get out of Egypt, the be redeemed, to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, to fight our way to religious and social freedom...can't we just enjoy it for a little while? This is what our lives have become. We worship the gods of luxury and fashion because we love it and it feels good and isn't that ok? How can I love my neighbor as myself if I do not love myself? So we work hard in our jobs which take huge sums of our time because they and we are important. These employments earn us money so we can support ourselves and our loved one. And it is really really hard work. So to keep ourselves going and to recharge when we are burning out we fly off (sending tons of caustic fuel emissions in to the environment) on vacations to far off beautiful Club-Med esque places (where it turns out, many of the workers are being mistreated and used for their slave labor facing horrible choices of working these minimum wage jobs with incredible ill-treatment or a) starving to death or b) sex trafficking) or we go out to a fancy restaurant (where the food is often at the end of a lengthy chain of comprised worker's rights, pretty poor agricultural practice, and some intense and complicated global policies which ultimately look like they benefit third-world developing nations but really are self-serving to US financial gains...) or buy a beautiful new something (often made in a sweatshop) to feel better so we can get up the next day and keep fighting for more money so we can live comfier lives and buy more things to feel better when we work so hard to make more money...

This whole paragraph wants me to go back to bed (in my warm apartment under the down comforter I bought at Target made in China probably by small children subsisting on ten cents a day) and hibernate until global warming destroys the planet.

I sometimes get stuck here at this place feeling overwhelmed and I want to walk away.

But then I think, not caring, for me, is just not an option. Ahhh...the burden of being over informed...my damn intellectual curiosity is destroying my ability to sleep. ;)

See next post for more...I think there is a lot to digest here...I would love love love your comments