Common Christian Misperceptions About Judaism

Common Christian Misperceptions About Judaism

Even highly educated people are wont to believe anything malicious about Jews- last week, New York Times, published an interview with accomplished writer, Alice Walker. She proudly pointed out to the interviewer that her favorite book, the one most important was one written by David Ickes, And the Truth Shall Set You Free. It turns out, that the book is a modern rewrite of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Yes, even highly praised and influential people, who have experienced oppression and hatred themselves, can have warped and twisted ideas about us Jews.

Now, we are approaching Dec 25, the day, which for Christians, as Christmas, is the birth of the Savior, who quite importantly, lived and died as a Jew, it is valuable to reflect on some common misperceptions Christians have of Jews, and thereby, learn something about Judaism for ourselves.

Some thirty-five years ago, the US suffered a major terror attack. At that time, the LA Times ran a headline” US Bars ‘ Eye for an Eye’ on Terrorists.” A State Department Official made mention that the US could never be as swift as Israel to retaliate, as it does not believe in an eye for an eye,” It is not an Old Testament country”

 The implication is that the US is a morally superior nation because it is Christian nation, whereas Israel, which is Jewish, is morally inferior.

There is no other way to interpret the statement, which distinguishes New Testament from Old Testament.

 He certainly was ignorant of American moral history, which, as a New

Testament country, based on love and forgiveness, wiped out entire Indian tribes, enslaved the black, firebombed Dresden and Tokyo, dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 Let not the kettle call the pot black.

He was also ignorant of religious history and the Bible, as are many people, including our own fellow Jews, because he had no understanding of what the moral requirements of the "Old” Testament are on warfare or what the meaning of “eye for eye” is.

This all serves as a reminder to us of how much education and teaching still must be done, both in the left and the right., across the board. We have excellent relations with Christian clergy, and many Christian educators have attempted to straighten things out, but from the clergy to the congregants there is often a chasm a mile wide. Certainly, we, as Jews, should know what some of the common misperceptions are that Christian held and may still hold about Judaism.

1)    An “Old” versus a “New” Testament.

. As a Jew, we can never use such a term. We don't have an "Old" Testament. Old means worn out, no longer valid, as in an old car, or an old coat. It is replaced by the New, in Christian thought, in other words, better, as in "New car" or "new coat".

 This is a distinction which has its roots in the earliest of church teachings, that saw Judaism as an outmoded, no longer valid, system of belief. It was termed

” supersession”, whereby the “Church” has superseded the “Synagogue”. ( In Islamic thought, the Quran has superseded both Jewish and Christian scriptures.) The  Synagogue is depicted in medieval statuary as a blind-folded woman.

The "Old Testament" means the Old Dispensation, the one that didn't work, the one that was given to Moses and was valid only till Jesus came, and instituted a New Dispensation.

In practical matters, most of historic church teachings on Judaism referred to us as a vanquished and vanished religion and people. Church texts assumed that we vanished with the year 70, with the destruction of Jerusalem This was adopted by many modern non-religious historians, such as Arnold Toynbee, who declared the Jewish people to be a “Syriac fossil.”. Jews should have disappeared long ago. The idea that, as a religion and a people, we continued to grow and mature, and develop was totally ignored, because until the past century, Christianity refused to grant us any validity whatsoever. Our only function was to serve as a proof of what happened to us because we rejected Jesus.

Again, while the Vatican and many Protestant Churches did much to change these positions, old assumptions die out slowly.

2)    Jews are strict, exacting, wanting their eye for an eye.

. Shakespeare put it bluntly;Shylock, the Jew, wants his pound

of flesh, whereas the Christian preaches “The quality of mercy

is not strained.”

 What does an eye for an eye. mean? After all, Christians never

repudiated the morality of the Bible, of our text; they repudiated

the religious details and obligations, but never the moral principles,

so an eye for an eye becomes an issue for Christians as well.

Every precept in the Bible comes to correct an existing condition.

One thousand years before time of Moses, in the oldest civilization, Sumer, there

was no such thing as an eye for eye; one can buy off a crime. For example, if a citizen killed another citizen, he could, instead of being killed, pay off the damage. A wealthy citizen would be spared but a poor citizen would be executed.

Then, in the time of Abraham, in Babylonia, Hammurabi tried to right wrongs in his famous code. It was the ancient Babylonian who formulated the principal of "an eye for an eye".

Thus, if a house collapses, and the son of the owner is killed, they shall take the son of the builder, and kill him instead. Quid pro quo; tit for tat. A fair exchange, but what fault was it of the son of the builder?

There was still the matter of social class. “If a commoner strikes the eye of

Commoner, he shall have his eye struck out„ but if a nobleman strike the eye of a commoner, he shall pay compensation.” There was no equality of justice before the law in this understanding of “eye foe eye”.

In the sense of the Bible, an “eye for eye”, a quid pro quo, can’t be distorted by rank or nobility; it is a radically new principal on which all justice , including American justice stands. It is not a Jewish principal, alone. It is a universal legal principal now. An eye for an eye, not a head for an eye; the punishment cannot exceed the crime. Not an eye for commoner but a dollar for a noble; there is no difference between a noble’s eye and a commoner’s eye, or between a man's eye and a woman's eye; all are of equal worth before the Law. Therefore, the noted father of international law, Hugo Grotius ,saw this as the basis of all fair and equitable law.

This was clear in the year 1300 before the common era, yet, in so called “New Testament” societies, including civilized England up to two centuries ago, or in this society, up .to the last century, a man could be hung for the crime of petty theft or for horse-stealing.

Victor Hugo in Les Miserable told the story of the relentless hounding of a man for the theft of some bread to feed his family. Had the French followed the “Old Testament” in France, the central character would have returned the bread and paid a small fine to the owner. The society, in turn, would have seen to it that he could feed the family. That is “0ld” Testament legalism.

Was an eye for an eye ever enacted?

The section in which “eye for eye” is first mentioned, in Exodus, is part of a discussion of a practical case, of two citizens in a fight. If one of the two is injured, the other is not injured in exchange. Rather “eye for eye” is invoked to clarify what the law itself determines, “rak shivto yiten ve.rapo yerapeh”, He shall pay for the loss incurred by disability and for medical expenses. Later, the Sages included compensation for pain, embarrassment, and loss of future income from the injury.

There were some, the Sadducees, interpreted it literally. -The Rabbis, the Pharisees, refuted this position. If an “eye for an eye” means “identical loss”, since when do we know that your eye is equal to my eye, or that your arm is equal to my arm. There is no possible identicality. Therefore, it can only intend compensation, a fair and adequate repayment for damages done.

3)    Resist not evil?

This contrast of “eye for eye” versus mercy is an extension of an argument already heard in the New Testament, put in the mouth of Jesus:” You have heard it said ‘An eye for an eye ‘, yet l say unto you ,’Resist not evil, but whosoever smite you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also’."

(Jesus is not being original here; he is quoting Lamentations, Eicah,”’ I gave my cheek to the one who smote me.” Here, the :” smiter” is God, and reference is to accepting the punishment that  the author has incurred. Similarly, “ if someone wants to take your cloak, give him your tunic as well”, is a quote from Proverbs).

The statement “Eye for Eye" was used by the aforementioned State Department spokesman  to denigrate Judaism, in contrast with the noble stance of Christianity, yet this nation at no time recognized its moral obligation to "Resist not evil". Not only has this nation rejected the preaching of Jesus, “Resist not evil", but every Christian institution, with the exception of a very few, such as Quakers, has outspokenly declared " Resist evil”, and rightly so!  The “New” Testament is surely pushed back, on this issue, in deference to the “Old”.

4)    Love your enemy?

Yet another statement of Jesus is taken to refer to the superiority of Christianity: “You have heard it said: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”

I challenge any one to find me one sentence in our side of the Book, in which anyone is commanded to hate an enemy.

 It has been suggested that Jesus was speaking as a Jew, to a Jewish audience, and was himself preaching Judaism on this point; in other words, he was denouncing the militant groups, the Kanaim, the Zealots,  on the fringes of the Jewish

community, who were preaching militancy and revenge against the Roman rulers. He was speaking as a Jew against Jewish extremists. (Indeed, one of his followers was known as “ the Zealot”, a reference, perhaps to his having come from that party over to the Jesus party.)

Well, what about the enemy? On the contrary, the Torah states categorically,”  If you see the donkey of your enemy lying under his burden, you shall surely help him to raise his donkey again." and “You may not hate your brother in your heart or bear a grudge.”

What of “ Love the stranger’? The Torah states, "You shall love him, as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Israel; Jesus knows this very well and is restating it to his followers.

5)    Law versus Love

Judaism is a religion of dry law, whereas Christianity is a religion of love-

Over and again, the prophets preached Chesed-love and though the Rabbis of old established Gemilut Hasadim, unconditional deeds of love ,as one of the three foundations of the world, alongside God's teaching, Torah, and the worship of God, Avodah.

6)    Law versus faith

Judaism is a religion of dry legalism, whereas Christianity is the religion of uplifting faith This perspective is in utter disregard for the magnificence of religious imagination of the Prophets, the Psalms, the Midrash of the

Rabbis, the poetry of the Siddur, the songs of the medieval Rabbis, or the speculation and imagination of the Kabbalah.

Judaism is a religion of the law, whereas Christianity is a religion of faith. In the teachings of the early church fathers, the laws of Moses and Israel were a burden to be done away with, a punishment of the children of Israel, who were a nation of sinners.  In al I of Jewish thought, the observance of the teachings of the Torah, the Halakha, was the freest and highest expression of faith, as a joy, not a burden, as a privilege, and not a punishment

The early Church teachings have been corrected by the modern church leaders. Yet much remains to be done, when educated intellectually enlightened people spout the same failed platitudes about us Jews.  The worst of all, though, is the failure of our Jews to know what a rich treasure is ours, that we have shared with the world.

Nov 3 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Martyrs Memorial Comments

We Are Not Alone

Nov 3 2018 Pittsburgh Tree of Life Martyrs Memorial Comments

We Are Not Alone

I have, in my possessions, two photographs of my grandmother, Binah. One shows a well-groomed and well coiffed older woman, a look of a peaceful time.

The other is of almost the same period, but here, my grandmother’s hair is tussled, untidied, as if she were just rushing to get out. This picture bears a stamp of the Polish consulate in Vienna, and I realized that it was her photo for a visa or a passport, which she needed immediately in order to get out.

It was 80 years ago, almost to this date, that she had been attacked by frenzied mobs in the wake of Kristallnacht, the night of shattered glass, Nov 9, 1938. She was among the fortunate ones, as she was able, with my grandfather, Shmuel, to get to Switzerland and safety.

Eighty years later , a man filled with hate for Jews, attacked the peaceful worshippers at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Images of Kristallnacht pop into our mind.

Of course, we are deeply, deeply worried. There is the blatant attack, such as transpired last week. We Jews are still the largest target for hate-crimes against any religious group. There is also a subtle anti-Semitism, whereby the New York Times this week admitted that it has intentionally down played attacks on Jews because the attackers didn’t match any one’s preferred profile for hater. 

There is a subtle anti-Semitism when Columbia University sends an email to the students denouncing the attack yet fails to mention that this was specifically an attack on Jews! 

A Louis Farrakhan can bait us with calls of “ termites” and worse,  and  be a guest of honor at Aretha Franklin’s funeral.

However, it is also, also vital to be aware of the differences of then and now.

Then, we had a President who suppressed reports of the mass killings of Jews because he was afraid that the American public would not support the war effort if they thought they were saving Jews.

Today, we have a President, who, no matter our opinion of him, must surely have been thinking of his own Jewish grandchildren when he laid the wreath at the synagogue this week. The killer, after all, had accused the President of being a tool of the Jews.

Then, a Father Coughlin could draw 30 million avid listeners to his radio show, and spew his claim that Jews were behind Communism and its barbarities.

Today, we have a Catholic Church that speaks openly of its “ Jewish heritage” and has declared that  God never gave up on his covenant with the Jews. The same attitude has shaped Protestant Churches, especially in that wing, the Evangelical wing, with which we have so many differences.

So yes, we have friends among the white, Protestant and Catholic public, far more than we have enemies. We have friends , far more , among African-Americans, than we have enemies.We have friends, far more , among Latinos, than we have enemies.

Yes, even among American Muslims, we have many friends, because the Muslim community here is not the community of Malaysia, for example, whose distinguished past president espoused much the same drivel as the Pittsburgh murderer. The America Muslim community is different. We have friends.

 It is vital then, for us, to continue to forge our bonds with our fellow Americans, of all ethnic origins, and all faiths, and of both parties.

It is so significant, therefore, that we have come together, Jews of Ashkenazi and American roots, and Jews who have fled here to escape persecution in Iran, together as Americans, with our friends of all backgrounds who joined with the Jewish  community this weekend. Here, we shall, to borrow Ben Franklin’s words, all hang together, or be hanged separately.

We have sweated blood and tears in this country to get where we have gotten. We will not allow the failures and dregs of society to rob us of our dignity and our pride. We work together with our all Americans for a society that can enable us to fulfill our dreams in amity and fellowship.

Amen.

Are We Still Your People?

Are We Still Your People? Yom Kippur Yizkor 2018

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I am going to dedicate my sermon tonight to a lesson in a Hebrew word, but to get to it, I am going to tell you some curious tales about my previous community, in Whittier, California and the first Jewish settlers in Whittier just after World War II.
Before then, it turns out that the only Jew of note to have set foot in Whittier was Albert Einstein, who had visited Whittier College. Eventually, it became the Jewish Beverly Hills of Eastern LA County  and now, by the way, Whittier is, according to the LA Times, the Hispanic Beverly Hills.
But back to  WWII. Young Jews, fresh from military service began to settle in that region. These young people had very little Jewish background  but they knew they needed to have a community of their own in a Quaker–Anglo town.
Well, how do you find Jews in such a Jewish wilderness? One of the first members was the local bus driver. Whenever someone would get up on the bus, he would begin whistling Hatikvah. If the passenger would look up at him, he would immediately invite him or her to join the new community.
This now takes me closer to my point, about the lesson in Hebrew that I said I was giving tonight.
It is another lesson in how we find each other.
I want to take us to the other side of the world, to Europe, about the same time as my story of Whittier.   Keep in mind that, Europe, in the aftermath of World War II ,was a mess, with some 31 million refugees that had to be resettled.  Jews were prominent among those wandering masses, Jews  wandering, from , country to country, village to village, camp to camp The British, in particular, put up obstacles to block the mass flow of Jewish survivors, lest they slip through the British blockade and get to Palestine.  Remember also that pogroms and murder continued against Jews after the cannons fell silent. Jews had to evade the border guards and also, keep evade the locals who thought they needed to finish what Hitler couldn’t.
Yet they needed to find a way to reveal themselves to one another.
My father told me that there was a code word the survivors used. One would see someone who looked Jewish, and he would whisper "Amcha?” If the other one would respond "Amcha!", then each knew who the other was, and they could let their guard down.
Amcha-- How many know the word?
It is a word for the common man in Hebrew and Yiddish. We distinguish die sheine loit—the beautiful people, high society, from amcha-just plain folk. It's not a matter of money, but of style—the Kennedy family, for example, are sheine loit, for example, but most celebrities, though they may have money, are Amcha-ordinary people. That is the figurative meaning.
The literal meaning though, is Am- Cha-Your people. Am is people, the cha at the end—your. Just who does this Am, this people, belong to? Who is the “ your” referring to?
During this High Holy Day season we have repeated, over and again, the 13 attributes of God. Adonay… el rachum v chanun. , The 13 attributes emphasize God as merciful, and this declaration of God’s attributes, what we may call the only definition of God the Torah gives us, is taken from the story of the Golden Calf.
When the children of Israel make the Golden Calf, God is at first incensed. He calls to Moses: “Your people whom you took out of Egypt.”
Here’s that word, Amcha-Your people.”
Here, Moses responds with great Hutzpah, and turns the tables on God, using God’s very words against him.
“Why are you angry at your people whom you took out of Egypt?"
Here is the point.  Whose people are we--amcha- “Your people”, “Moses’ people” or “your people”, God's people?
The parallel, suggested our Rabbi's is in a tale of a king of who had a vineyard run by his tenant. When ever it would be a good vintage year, the king would boast," My wine is great." When it was a bad vintage year, he complained to the tenant—“Your wine is bad!” To this the tenant retorted," Listen, King--good or bad-- it's still your wine!”
Anyone who has ever been a parent knows this--between a father and mother, when the child is good, the father and mother each say, ‘my child"; when the child is bad, each says "Your child."
Moses was making it very clear," God, you took them out of Egypt-they are your people--Good or bad--they're your people."
That is the essence of this idea of Amcha--we Jews may be good, or, very often, we are not good. But good or bad, we remain God's people, won by freedom from slavery in Egypt, and again, by commitment, at Sinai. Good or bad--we are part of that covenant.
That is Amcha.  Amcha yisrael. Your people, Israel. It is a reminder, that as long as we remain part of the covenant, a part of Klal Yisrael—the entity of Israel, the community of the Jewish people-that there is hope for us.
You know that our worship is all in the plural, the communal “We”. We did, we ask, we seek. It is “Our father, our King,” “Our”, not “my”, and we confess to sins, “We have sinned, we have betrayed”; not “ you have sinned” nor “ I have sinned”.
We drown or float together. That is Amcha.
But are we still “Amcha”?  Do our young Jews in America feel bound and responsible for each other? I bring up this thought of Amcha because we have great questions as to whether we are still this “Amcha”-Your People. Are we still a people, or are we falling apart.
A few years ago, the poll Pew reported that 94% of American Jews were proud to be Jews. Big deal !.
  There are no barriers to our achievements, there are no quotas, no obligation to go to the baptismal font to get ahead, no need for that obsession to get ahead in business or academics, full steam ahead. No longer.
But what does it mean in terms of commitment? Of getting off of one’s duff to do something about it.
We all know that America’s Jews are the most secular population in this country; we have been so for many generations, yet something has still pulled us together. We just don’t know what it is anymore.
  We have a sense of a younger generation that no longer feels it shares in the fate of our fellow Jews. Life is good.
So, we have this scene at the graduation this summer, in which a great writer, Michael Chabon, is invited to Hebrew Union College to be the commencement speaker. We all love great speakers, especially one who makes the New York Times best-seller list. So he speaks to the future leaders of American Jewry, and in essence, tells them that he no longer identifies with the story of the Exodus from Egypt, no longer can sit through a Passover seder, no matter how modernized, and that we should no longer try to be different from anyone else. In short, in order to survive, we should all become his kind of intellectual, and be like everyone else- everyone else in his particular crowd of intellectuals.
It’s not new. Heine, the greatest writer of Germany, a baptized Jew, Heine said of Judaism, in one of his bitter days, “Judaism is not a religion, but a misfortune.” But, at least Heine, the Baptized Jew, went on to defend his Jewish people.
The intellectual father of communism, Karl Marx, went much further. “What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money”, “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”
So, following ancient Heine and Marx, and modern Chabon- after the turmoil of the past two centuries, after pogroms, and the Holocaust-- and after all, Israel is not a perfect State and the Europeans and the BDS ‘ers are angry with us, and the LA Times doesn’t want to consider denying the Jewish people alone a kind of hate-speech, so after all, maybe, maybe we throw in the towel. No longer,”Amcha”, no longer “ Your people”-not God’s people, not my people. Not a people. Period.
[LA Times in September published an official editorial defending the right to pursue BDS against Israel, and against applying anti-Zionism as a form of hate speech on campus. This paper would never have given such consideration to a right to protect old South Africa from accusations of apartheid, for example.]
And then, and then- the ever-dying Jewish people, always written off as a “ Vanishing people”, written off by the Romans, by Christianity, by Islam, by National Socialism, by Marxism, by wealth and prosperity and its temptations, nevertheless, we are still here. Never vanished, never vanquished.
Something pulls at our heart-strings and brings us together at this sacred season, something reminds us that, in some way, as diluted and watered down as it maybe, we are still,” Amcha”, still one people, still God’s people, however, we may choose to enact that idea and express it in ourselves.
I want to go back to the story of the gold Calf, and to the core verse” adonay, adonay, el rachum”  that is repeated so many times this season. Our version of the verse is not the version that Moses heard.
Moses heard. Moses heard a longer version, which continues “nakeh loyenakeh" will not clear the guilty but will visit the sins of the fathers unto the children unto the third and fourth generation.” This version was erased from our prayer books.
Our Rabbis erased God's words. They removed almost all of that sentence and stopped at the word, "Nakeh"--God will acquit. Period. End of statement.

Our Rabbis defined the Torah for us as a book of hope and in the spirit of that understanding they deliberately edited the Torah in the sprit of the Torah. Again, they were speaking to us, to the Amcha, the people. However far we may stray, no matter what may have been done before, no matter what our parents or grandparents may have done, we will find an open door leading back in. Remember then, that our religion is a religion of hope, that it is the hope for an ultimate universal redemption that stands behind the personal redemption we each seek at the this season. We have never lost that hope, that Hatikvah, for ourselves, for our people, for humankind.
There is then this final thought for us tonight, as we remind ourselves that we are Amcha, your people, O God. We haven’t left you; we haven’t left each other; we haven’t left ourselves.
I want to conclude with a prayer and a melody that tie in now to this day. .
In the Nazi ghettoes, as our fellow Jews faced a threat they had never before faced, one ancient prayer gained new relevance
This is the text of the prayer:
שומר ישראל. שמר שארית ישראל. ואל יאבד ישראל. האומרים שמע ישראל:

Guardian of the people Israel, guard the remnant of Israel, and let not Israel perish, those who say, Shma Yisrael.

I am going to chant it, in the chant that was sung by those Jews in the ghettos and camps. If you know it, join with me:

שומר ישראל. שמר שארית ישראל. ואל יאבד ישראל. האומרים שמע ישראל:

Guardian of the people Israel, guard the remnant of Israel, and let not Israel perish, those who say, Shma Yisrael.

May this year, be one in which we take our place among amcha yisrael, your people Israel, wholeheartedly. Dear Guradian of Israel, we are still  you people, Amcha—you watch out for us, and we will watch out for you. Amen

High Holy Rosh Day 1  2018  Rabbi Norbert Weinberg

What do you see?

            If any of you checked our Facebook page or gotten one of our emails, you would have seen an interesting line, “Call in 5779 with History-and Her story.” I will be humble. The credit goes to our Cantor, Stacey Morse, who decided, correctly, that our mothers were players in the big game of Judaism, not just the fathers.

            What may seem as an attempt to show that we are hip and relevant, or flip and irreverent, is actually germane to this season. It is not some attempt to force gender-equality on us from some contemporary ideology de jour. Not man-splaining it. It is integral to this very holiday season.

            We speak in terms of “Yom HaDin”, Day of Judgement, and the image of God as judge, as king, as father, all male, harsh, and cold images. We think of an Abraham, taking his son, unemotionally, up on the altar, the abstract ideologue, so wrapped in his vision, that all else fades away.

            But this is only one half of the story.

            Every element in this season is associated with Atonement, Kippurim, achieving forgiveness, Slichah, and even more so, with a plea for Rachamim. Rachamim, Mercy, or compassionate love, comes from the word, “Rechem”- the womb, the uterus, that part of the woman, as mother, as giver of life, as nurturer.

            Hence, our Torah reading of the first day deals, first, with God remembering Sarah, as he promised. It follows with the tension between two mothers, Sarah and Hagar, as to which son, Isaac or Ishmael, is to be the heir to the message of Abraham. The Haftarah focus on the anguish of Hannah, who is the love object of her husband, yet feels unfulfilled as she is barren, childless. Tomorrow, our Haftarah reading depicts a despondent mother, Rachel, moaning as she sees her children led off to slavery in a distant land. It is the Holy One who now breaks down at Rachel’s tears and declare that the Israel is his own ben yakir li”, my dear son,’yeled sha’shuim”, the child whom he has indulged and spoiled. In the Torah reading of the second Day, too, Sarah is present by her absence. The classical Jewish mother. The Midrash says that as she hears of Abraham hauling Isaac up the mountain, she dies of heartbreak. How do we know? Because in the very next paragraph, Sarah is dead. Father is abstract; mother is all too much there.

            So, this is very much a herstory, not a history.

            At this point, I am going to pivot my focus on to one mother, the one who seems to be neglected, passed over by history, in our version, a least, Hagar. Truth be told, she is central to today’s reading. She is central because in her character, we learn about seeing and sight. We understand that she is blinded by her misery and pain. In story number two, Sarah dies; in this story, Hagar is immobilized and can not see her son’s salvation.

            Sight and its counterpart, blindness, are as much a matter of our insight and outlook as it is a matter of photons striking the rods and cones in our retina.

            Blind people who can see, while sighted people are visionless, is a popular theme for many a writer.

            Many years back, there was a play and a movie; called Butterflies are Free, the story of a young man, blind from birth.

            His mother reminds him of the children's tales she composed of "Little Donny Dark" with his slogan" There are none as blind as those who will not see". While the line may sound trite and commonplace, it rings too true for us all--there are those who have no eyesight, yet know very well where they are going, and others, with 20/20 vision, who are constantly walking in to walls.

            For Rosh Hashanah, for a time in which we are to look inside ourselves, it is appropriate that our Torah reading of both days deals with being able and ready to see. 

            The first days reading deals with mother Hagar, abandoned in the desert, outcast, with her son Ishmael, who is dying of thirst. She has given up all hope, steps back at the distance of a bow’s shot because, “I cannot look at the death of my child.” God hears the child’s cry, an angel asks, typical Jewish fashion, a question, “Mah Lach Hagar?” Literally, “What’s it for you”, a kind ironic surprise, to say,” What are you worried about, what’s the matter.”Then”Al tiri”-Don’t be afraid!

            Just then, our reading says:    

 Vayifkah eyeneha-God opened her eyes and “hiney”-behold there is a well.

            Where did this well come from so mysteriously? Our Rabbis never liked the idea of miraculously appearing wells. “Hiney”-It’s here. !

            Our commentaries suggest that the well had been there all along. In her anguish, Hagar had been blind to the solution, to the well of water next to her. By putting fear aside, she was able to see what was there, all along. Water, life, and a future for her child and his progeny.

            On the second day, we read of Abraham and Isaac. This is a parallel with the Ishmael account, only here, Isaac is in danger. We know nothing of Abraham’s emotions. That is common in Biblical story-telling, and he is, unlike the mother, the macho, the stoic—doesn’t show anything. But here, too, we realize that he is blind, for we are told, with the same word as used in the story of the well, " vayar vehiney ayil aher"-Abraham sees and ,”hinei,behold there is another ram, "a ram to offer instead of his son. Did the ram just mysteriously appear?  Rather, it was there because Abraham was no longer blinded by his zeal, ready to recognize that his loyalty to God did not require the sacrifice of his beloved Isaac. Appropriately, the site is then called: Adonay Yireh"-God sees."

            So, we learn form our mothers, and from our fathers.

            Sight, ordinary eyesight, as we sense it, depends  as much on what our mind creates as what our eyes see. This is one of the classic givens of psychology.

             Sight itself is just a mass of information- light in its different frequencies strikes the retina, hits the rods and cones, and provides stimulation to the optic nerve. It is the mind which comprehends these as light and dark, colors, shapes-- it is our mind which then coordinates and interprets to produce vision.  This is true for physical vision. it also holds true for emotional and spiritual vision.

            In truth, people who are physically blind can often be aware of sights that most, with good eyesight, are blind to.

            "Better blind of eye than blind of heart (Midrash Ahikar 2.48) is how the Midrash phrased it, or" Not the eye but the heart is blind,” in the words of the poet, ibn Gabirol (Mivhar Hapninim).

             Helen Keller, deaf and blind from the age of two, who established so much of the principals used today in making the blind self-sufficient, once claimed:

            "I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in woods, sea or sky, nothing in the city street, nothing in books. What a witless masquerade is this seeing:

            It were better far to sail forever/

            In the night of blindness/

            With sense and feeling and mind

            Than to be thus content with the mere act of seeing.

They have the sunset, the morning skies, the purple of distant hills, yet their souls voyage through this enchanted world with nothing but a barren stare."

                        Hagar, lost in the wilderness, was blind to a simple well; with words of hope, she could see what was there all along. Abraham, a man of vision, could see that his ultimate sacrifice did not include his own beloved son.

             We too, like them, need to open our eyes constantly both to our physical world and to our immediate personal world. We can find a paradise or we can be blinded and find a hell--or worse--- a boredom.

             Being able to see the spiritual, the healing, the noble and the sacred is a special gift in itself. Our very religion is based on the readiness to see what others have missed. It is Moses who goes into the desert to discover the burning bush, and this is how the poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning described the experience:

            Earth's crammed with heaven

            / And every common bush afire with God/

            But only he who sees, takes off his shoes/

             The rest sit around and pluck blackberries."

            This thought was echoed by the quintessential American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who put it this way," If we meet no gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps."

            Two centuries ago, the English mystic and poet, William Blake warned against a world taken over by the cold force of reason and the wheels of industry--He presaged a world of guillotine, gas chamber and gulag. He called for a return to vision, in his words:

            To see a world in a grain of sand/

And a heaven in a wild flower/

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/

And eternity in an hour.

             The very essence of the Jewish people, our ability to exist for so many centuries, is precisely because we, as a people, as a sacred community, followed in this pattern of being willing to open our eyes to visions of the sacred.

            An ancient Midrash describes Abraham our ancestor having a vision of a castle glowing with shimmering lights. A voice comes from heaven and tells him," Can there be such a glowing, shining castle without the Lord of the castle." Thus, it is said, he saw the sanctity and holiness in the world, and recognized the existence of a divine source of this sanctity.

            There are those of us who go through life seeing the flames of divinity in every wall and corner. There rest of us see and hear nothing, only pitch black.      

           

            On  this Rosh Hashanah day, we need to learn, both from our mothers and our fathers, may we open our eyes like Hagar and see the wells of sustenance, may we open our eyes like Abraham and find our offerings of thanksgiving, may we see infinity and eternity, may we find cheyn vahesed- Grace and favor-- in the eyes of God and our fellow man and woman. Amen.

Israel at 70 from inside

Reporting from Israel- June 2018

I .Welcome to Jerusalem

There is nothing like the Jerusalem skyline, especially form the porch of Margalit Zadok, my 94 year old mother-in-law, who was the prime reason for our visit. From here, you see the Shrine of the Book ( housing Dead Sea and Bar Cochba artifacts), the Israel Museum, the Hebrew University, and in the distance, at the center, the tower of the YMCA and the King David Hotel, where my father-in-law his antiquities and jewelry store (Remember the scene in Exodus, where Paul Newman sits with Jill St. John on the deck of the hotel, overlooking the old city? Prince William and Katherine are there right now on their Royal visit. That's the King David)

At the same time, we celebrated our grandson's Bar Mitzvah at the Kotel- right at the corner of the Western and Southern Wall, the one you don't see in the news, the one that actually faces lower levels of the original wall of Herod.

While there has been much controversy about having a women's full service section at the plaza in front of the Western Wall ( a political football in the midst of Israeli secular- traditional- Orthodox-and ultra-Orthodox entities), the south section of the wall, next to Robinson's arch, one of the ancient gateways into the Temple Mount 2000 years ago, has been in use for some time now. Political football doesn't get played when there are no media cameras around.

II. Korea Loves Israel

On our first night on the town ( Jerusalem that is) we attended a Korean festival celebrating Jerusalem and Israel's 70th Anniversary

A traditional Korean dance, accompanied by the words of the Psalms.

I think we Jews have trouble accepting being loved. We have been beaten around over so many centuries that we don't know how to digest it when someone actually appreciates or admires us. 

It turns out that Koreans love us better than we love ourselves. They also want to know the secrets of our success and a best seller in Korea is known as " the Korean Talmud". Well, it's not really a Talmud, and doesn't present the tools for good pilpul ( hot, peppery arguments),but rather a collection of some Rabbinic discussions. However, you get the gist.

II. Apartheid State?

This is the mural on top of the canopy at the Old Train Station in Jerusalem. It shows a mix of people of different faiths and nations, in a  state of devotion.

It will be hard to find a more diverse society, yet holding together. Besides the expected mix of Ashkenazic and Sefardic Jews, and Arabs, the people mix is now Asian ( heavily from the Philippines and Thailand) as well as African . The Jewish mix is becoming increasingly diverse, so that besides Jews of African origin, I have come across, for example, East Asian Hasidic children with long peyos.

Ramadan just ended, and the restaurants were full of Muslim families celebrating the end of the fast. Religious and secular Jews, religious and secular Muslims ( women with and without hijab ), while the service staff cleaning up after them were white, blond -haired European males. That did not happen in Ol' Miss, nor in Jo'berg,SA, and certainly not in III Reich.

We had a chance to drive through Israeli Arab villages, such as Um al Fahm, filled with new mosques, with high-rising spires. Under historic Islam and Christianity, the respective Mosque or Cathedral had to be higher than the place of worship of the non-believer, and certainly much higher than the synagogue of the lowly Jew. In Israel, where we, as Jews have the run of the roost and are accused of running an apartheid state, our synagogues are still small and lowly. It's OK.

Here is an example of our new ethnic mix- Afro and Euro with tzitis hanging out. There is also a hipster-Orthodox trend ( reminiscent of my Orthodox Hippy friends of yore)-- side-locks down to the chest, fashionable hair trim, trendy clothes, tzitzit with a blue thread .

In this so-called "Apartheid State", traditional Jewish, traditional Muslim, and secular of indeterminate ethnicity mix freely at the popular Malha Mall. How can you tell the Jewish women from the Muslim, especially among the trendy? Both wrap a cloth of some kind around the head; both are signs of personal modesty. The Muslim version, a fashionable scarf, covers all the hair and the neck, leaving only the face visible. The Jewish version, also a fashionable scarf, is wrapped in a high turban ( that's the new look) , covering much, but not all of the hair. On the other hand, one's idea of modesty is a matter of judgement. The Muslim women covers all the hair and neck, the arms and legs, but wears tight-tight fitting designer jeans and blouses. The Jewish woman leaves the hair, neck and arms half-way exposed, but dresses in knee-length dresses, and half-length sleeves. 

III Still People of the Book?

Open air-annual book fair at the Old Train Station in Jerusalem

Israelis are all connected to the web, on the computers, tablets and smart-phones. Despite that, they still buy and read books. Print newspapers, as opposed to on-line news, are still hot, and more papers are published and read per capita in Israel than any where else.

IV. Remember the pictures of the old Kibbutz Pioneers clearing the fields of rocks by hand?

An robotic automated plant potting assembly line

Temperature and humidity controlled hot-houses

Assembly line planting

Tom-Turkeys as big as 60 pounds.

We went to visit our friends , Heyden and Nomi , at Mei-Ami. Mei-Ami was established as a border settlement , separating the Israeli Arab city of Umm al Fahm and Jordan ( Yes, from 1948 till 1967, there was no Palestine, only a Jordan, on the West Bank). What was a barren hilltop has become a very comfortable upscale enclave , while neighboring Umm al Fahm has upscale designer clothing stores, the best doctors and nurses in the area and plenty of mosques!
Agriculture is today a high-tech industry. Each hothouse is computer controlled for temperature and humidity, and each plant is individually water. Not a drop to waste.  Israeli Jews and Arabs work side by side, together with Thai guest workers( signs are in Hebrew and Thai).

V. What's happening on the other side?

On the Syrian-Israeli cease-fire line ( just 300 feet away from me) in the Golan Heights at Kuneitra.

We drove up to the UN observation post at Mt. Bental, which looks directly into Syrian Golan and Syria proper. The UN force is appropriately called UNDOF- UN Disengagement Observation Force ; in simple English, we can look, but we don't want to get involved. For that reason, the UN had abandoned its actual positions in the demilitarized zone between Israeli and Syria; after we were there, Assad's forces went in, the UN could do nothing and Israel will probably have to push them back again).At that moment, the Syrian sides had a momentary respite form bloodshed ( fighting broke out again a few days later), so there was nothing to observe.There were two UN observers, one from Norway and one from Finland,  and since, to borrow the title of a famous World War I book, Im Westen Nichts Neues, or in English , All Quiet in the Western Front,the soldiers were quite at ease till we arrived on the scene. At that point, they made haste to open their laptop and maps, and look busy. Ofra had a very telling conversation with them:

O-Tell me, on this side, it is all green and cultivated. On that side, it is all brown and undeveloped. Why do you think that is so?

UN-Well, on the Israeli side, they have these well organized Kibbutzes, that have developed this area. On that side, those are all family owned lands.

O- But ,just because they are owned by families, don't those families care and tend for their farms just as much. They must not be very smart.

UN- I guess you are right- They are not very smart.

There, you have it from an official source at the UN.

Back in 2005 , Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza strip. They intentionally left behind very valuable, high-production greenhouses.  These residents shortly thereafter destroyed the greenhouses, voted in Hamas, and have been crying ever since. Concrete that was sent to build hospitals was used for offensive tunnels into Israel and even toy kites donated by Japan for the children of Gaza have been turned into weapons of arson to destroy nature reserves in Israel.

A friend of ours posted this picture of a kite-bomb that had landed not far from her brother. Whoever launched it had hoped some child would pick it up out of curiosity and be crippled or killed by it.

They must not be very smart!

VI. Life Goes On

A colorful procession in Moroccan festive clothes for a Bat Mitzvah

The Mahane Yehudah Market by day

Spice shop, with its spectrum of colors, smells and tastes

The same Mahane Yehudah by night, transformed into the hotspot for the young

Shalva Institute, where children with special needs get personal attention to grow and develop

Israel is one of the happiest countries on earth , by the United Nations annual international happiness assessment, #11, ahead of the US at #18. Even the wealthy Emirates, Qataris and Saudis don't have as broad a smile.The neighbors, Lebanon and Jordan, keep a stiff upper lip, the "Occupied "Palestinians are sour but rank happier than "Unoccupied"  the Egyptians, Iraqis, Iranians, or Tunisians , even those Powerhouse Indians. Syrians and Yemenis are in a state of total depression.

Constant attacks, constant threats, missiles poised against them, legal charges against the prime minister, the high cost of defence, and the like. Everyone complains and protests, and then, they are happy. 

How do they do it?

This is what they sang at parties for the past 30 years:

EIZO MEDINAH Eyzo medinah, eyzo medinah Eyzo medinah, meyuchedet beminah What a country, what a country What a country, one of a kind The government presses,  A country under pressure What a country, what a country! It continues as a lament of high prices, high taxes, corrupt officials, and concludes: Despite the mess and the deficiencies You're our country, for all the generations! There is a hora dance set to this song, and everyone is happy as they sing it!

VI.The Changing Role of Women

Meet Naseeba Keesh Smara, a pioneering woman of the Druze in the village of Bukata, Golan Heights.

Naseeba runs a one-woman tourist attraction in the Druze village of Bukata-- home -made traditional Druze food served in her home for tour groups  ( she can now offer vegetarian and kosher options!).

Naseeba grew up in the main Druze city of Majd-el-Shams, which, under the Syrians, had become more-or-less secularized. She moved to the viallge of Bukata, where the residents were much more traditional in their dress and behavior, and where a " liberated" woman was out of place. Naseeba did not let that stop her- she set out to get her own driver's license, get career training, build a business, run an orchard, and get the local men and women to respect her. 

It is one of the signs of shifts occurring in the status of women throughout the Middle-East, whether Jews, Druze, Muslim or Christian.

The food is great!

VII.What makes for authentic culture

The attack against what is called " Cultural Appropriation" is an essential element of Fascism and Racism. Richard Wagner and his contemporaries decried Jewish musicians as incapable of comprehending the true soul of music.  Kipling was famous for his " East is East and West is West and N'er the Twain Shall Meet." Oswald Spengler, the great theoretician adored by Nazism, based his concept of history on the inherent incompatibility of civilizations. It is expressed in the German term, Kulturkampf, the War of Civilizations.

What is it to be a Jew, but to be the greatest appropriators of all cultures of all times, yet fashioning a distinctly Jewish mode. Babylonian-Egyptian-Canaanite-Persian-Greek-Roman-European-Islamic. 

Here it is, in music, for your enjoyment

Traditional Korean melody in honor of Israel 

Traditional Yemenite wedding song, Ayelet Chen, set to contemporary arrangement. The only traditional instrument is the empty oil can at the left. The Muslim rulers there forbade Jews from playing any musical instruments; so much for the vaunted tolerance of Islamic society..

Klezmer music, Jewish Jazz of Eastern Europe, produced styles and rhythms that shaped American music

An Ode to Vodka

A Japanese Choir from Osaka, singing a classic Chasidic melody.

Welcoming the Bat Mitzvah girl, Moroccan style

These girls had all of a half hour to learn the entire routine

Dancing on the street, Ben Yehudah Pedestrian Mall

Today's top-hit group in Israel- Static -playing in front of the Knesset

VIII. Lest We Forget

A Marker at the corner of King George and Jaffa, Jerusalem, marking the murder of civilians by Palestinian terrorists in 2001. That wave of bombings was preceded by a wave of brutal bus bombings in 1996. That was after Israel had signed an accord with the PLO  for the sake of Peace in 1993!  

The settlers of the Land of Israel suffered for many years, warfare and terror, to create a vibrant state, with the death and maiming of soldiers and civilians alike in the thousands.

My grandfather's grandfather was murdered in Safed in 1896, before the " Zionist invasion". There was a pogrom against the Jews of Hebron in 1926, before the struggle for Independence. Terror gangs invaded Israel before 1956 and before 1967, and planted bombs, hijacked buses, planes , and even ocean liners, in the years since.

 If Israelis today are reluctant to open the floodgates of Hamastan-Gaza ( which they don't occupy) and to grant full independence to the PLO-run West Bank-Palestine ( which they also, to the most part, don't 'occupy'), it is no wonder.

Shalom al Yisrael- Peace for Israel