I Hate Abraham

I have a book from Israel called "Al Tishlkach yadkha el ha-na'ar" - or, Don't Send Your Hand Against the Boy, which is the line that the angel uses in this week's parshah, Vayera, to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. The book is all kinds of poetry, prose and art on the theme of the Akeidah.

I translated a couple of the pieces from the book, which I've used over time whenever we read this parshah, not only in the yearly cycle but also on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, when this story is also read.

Here is a selection from a book called Days of Ziklag (Hebrew: ימי צקלג, Yemei Tziklag), a novel by S. Yizhar, first published in 1958. It is widely considered to be one of the most prominent works in Israeli literature, but it isn't available in English, perhaps because it's over 1,000 pages long. In any case, the novel follows a squad of IDF soldiers trying to hold to a post in the Negev desert during the Israeli War of Independence. The snippet is called, "I Hate our Father Abraham":

I hate our father Abraham, who went to sacrifice Isaac. What right does he have over Isaac? Let him sacrifice himself! I hate the God who sends him to sacrifice and closes off every other option – that only the path of Akeidah is open to him. I hate that Isaac is nothing but the subject of an experiment – an experiment between Abraham and his God. This demonstration of Abraham. This proof of love. This demand for a demonstration of love. God sanctifying himself through the sacrifice of Isaac. I hate that the slaughter of sons is taken as a proof of love! To take strength and to gamble and to take life in order to settle an argument. And because the world is silent, and doesn’t rise up and rush forward to stop it. Scoundrels, why do sons need to die?

I hate the need to obtain something at the price of destruction, or annihilation, or torment, or compulsion. I doubt it’s even worth as much as a clove of garlic – that which can only be acquired through such destruction. Better to give up, to put up your hands and pull away – from battle, from kidnapping. I hate this warfare more than anything else. This arming of everything.

And I sit here waiting to murder, to kill, to destroy, and I collect all my strength and my nerve and my muscle and my mind – for that final moment when it will by my lot, according to my ability – to burst forth, and to take prey, to save my life in the devouring of what I will devour, to bite what's near, to slit a throat with a touch. And there isn’t any escape. That’s the way the world is built. It’s the way life is designed. That’s how it is – decree.

And it isn’t even possible to run away. If you are not okay with killing and being killed – there won’t be any good in the world. No justice, no love, no beauty. All of this – this is their path. If you are not ready to hand over your soul, to leap at the flame, to go out and draw near and kill, with skill, with finesse, even with bloodthirst, there is no world and there is no life, and all is chaos and emptiness. That is the way the world is made. And for me, myself, there is no other, more personal way. Only to take part.

Closing Remarks for 2010 Campaign Event (undelivered)

This was written to be the closing remarks at the MKJF's Campaign event on November 1, but in the end they didn't get delivered (nobody ever complained that a rabbi spoke too little). But I thought they were interesting (at least, they're interesting to me), so I'm posting them here and to the blog on the MKJF website.

I'm often looking at Jewish texts with one eye toward their use in Federation settings, writings with the themes of peoplehood, Jewish unity, charitable giving and Israel. I found a quote from Mordechai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, that addresses all of these, and I want to share parts of it with you. Now, Kaplan can be a difficult writer, so rather I'll hit the highlights.

What are the implications, Kaplan asks – social, political, cultural, and religious – of thinking of the Jews as an international people with its cultural center in Israel?

The social implications in their relations with one another is the sense of oneness and the mutual responsibility for each other’s spiritual and material well-being. In relation to the non-Jewish community, it means the right to continue to possess and develop our identity as a unique group, “combined,” Kaplan says, “with the readiness to cooperate as Jews in all endeavors for the establishment of a free society based on justice and peace.”

The political implications of Jewish peoplehood are the concern of Jews everywhere with a responsive society that looks after the less fortunate among us, as well as our concern with the freedom, stability, and security of the state of Israel.

Culturally, Jewish peoplehood means the fostering of Hebrew language and Jewish cultural expression by Jews in both Israel and the Diaspora, as well as each community's interest in the experiences of each other. In relation to the non-Jewish world, it means, where appropriate, the integration into Jewish culture of values found in other cultures which are compatible with Judaism, and the sharing of Jewish cultural creations with other cultures. This is what Joshua Nelson does with his melding of African American musical forms with Jewish religious content, and what we're going to be doing by sharing this music with our community and with the entire city of Wichita.

Although religion as such is the direct concern of the Federation, Kaplan points out that the modern conception of Jewish peoplehood has legitimated Jewish presence in the Diaspora even when settlement in Israel is available, and recognizes that freedom of conscience, even in religious matters, has become an integral component of Jewish life.

The conception of the Jewish future as the culmination of these factors, Kaplan writes, “marks a higher stage in the development of the Jewish [people]. It places the basis of Jewish unity not in an authoritative traditional creed or code but in the common purpose of Jewish to raise the moral and spiritual level of their group life.”

That's Kaplan's take. This is a Jewish Federation text if ever I saw one. For where is it that members of Jewish community of all customs, backgrounds, and beliefs come together in the shared endeavor of building Jewish peoplehood? Where is it that we organize ourselves to care for one another, for Jews all over the world, and for the well-being of the city and society in which we have chosen to live? Where is it that we organize ourselves politically in order to represent our communal interests, and culturally, to bring Jewish cultural expression to ourselves and to the community around us? Where is it that we are free to choose the means of Jewish expression that are most meaningful to us? It is in the Jewish Federation that we accomplish all these things.

As we begin our campaign year, may we keep these factors close to our hearts, as the main motivation for the work we do. May always remember that, the adage kol yisrael arevim zeh le'zeh – all members of Jewish community, all over the world, are responsible for one another – is never as fully expressed - socially, politically, culturally, even religiously - as in the work of the Jewish Federation. And may fulfilling that adage be our goal, as it has ever been the goal of Jewish people everywhere.

Parshat Lech L'cha

In this week’s parshah there’s a good Biblical example of the modern adage, “good fences make good neighbors.”

When he came to the land of Israel, in addition to his wife and their company, Abram brought his nephew, Lot. As they settled in the land, the Torah tells us, Abram and Lot both prospered: “Abram was very rich in cattle, silver and gold” (Gen. 13:2); “Lot… also had flocks and herds and tents…” (v. 5). As is sometimes the case, having wealth makes it hard for them to get along: “… their possessions were so great that they could not remain together” (v. 6).

The traditional commentators tend to look at this in light of Lot’s presence in the evil city of Sodom a couple of chapters down the line; Rashi says that what was happening was that Lot’s men were grazing their animals on other people’s fields, and Abram’s men were trying to stop them.

Now here’s where Abram’s moral character comes into play. He intervenes before the situation gets out of hand, and even though he is the senior partner, his solution is both humble and magnanimous:

’Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north.’

In other words, Abram gives Lot first dibs, even though it is Abram, and not Lot, who has been led to this land – promised this land - in the first place. But not to worry, because Lot’s requirements are decidedly less lofty than Abram’s:

Lot looked around him and say how well watered was the whole plain of the Jordan, all of it… So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward. Thus they parted from each other; Abram remained in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled…near Sodom. (vv. 10-12)

Lot has the choice of where to go, and chooses - for material reasons – to go east. We know he wasn’t concerned with spiritual matters because the very next verse tells us that Lot is moving into a bad neighborhood: “Now the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against God” (v. 13).

So Lot causes the problem, and Abram addresses it early and with care. He gives Lot the choice of where to go, and Lot’s choice is to leave Abram where he was. Abram’s Does the Right Thing throughout, and – in spite of this? because of it? – he ends up in Canaan, exactly where he was supposed to be, where his destiny and that of the people who came after him were to be.

There are times when circumstances determine that people need to separate. This could be due to all kinds of factors, and the reasons almost don’t matter: Abram certainly doesn’t seem to think any less of Lot, doesn’t treat him like someone who did something wrong, although he probably could have. The best we can do when we find ourselves in such situations is to try to be like our father Abraham: handle the situation as gently as we can, in the hopes that the relationships will be sustained, and in the faith that it will all end up as it is supposed to.

Shabbat shalom.

Parshat Noach

This week’s parshah is Noach. Because of the themes of environmental destruction and renewal in this parshah, many Jewish organizations (including the JCPA, the national community relations arm of the Federation movement) have designated this as “Global Climate Healing Shabbat,” an opportunity for the Jewish community to join with many others around the world in prayer and action “to prevent destruction and preserve the web of life in which the human race has emerged and created civilization.”

There’s a midrash (interpretive story) that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark, because he planted the cedars, waited for them to grow, and then cut them down, in full view of everyone. When the people of his generation asked him what he was doing he said, “The Sovereign of the Universe has informed me that God will bring a flood to the world.” (Gen. Rab. 30:7). In other words, everyone had plenty of warning, they just chose not to act on it. This comes to mind because of the article that was in the Eagle today that says polling shows that fewer people now believe that global warming exists, despite all the evidence. Will we make the same mistake as Noah’s generation?

At the end of the episode, God establishes a covenant with the human beings “and with every living thing on earth.” “I will maintain my covenant with you: never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” This is a commitment on God’s part not to destroy the earth. That power, these days, is in the hands of human beings, even more than it’s in God’s hands. Can we make a covenant with each other, with God, and with our fellow living creatures, not to destroy the earth? Will we?

Shabbat shalom.

This week's links

Here’s a story that was on NPR the other morning about a French priest who searches for unknown mass graves in Eastern Europe and records interviews with witnesses to the Holocaust.

Ha’aretz: US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell said Thursday that it was too soon to brand his efforts to resume peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders a failure.

A couple of weeks ago, Jay Michaelson (a writer and teacher in New York and the founder of Zeek magazine) wrote a piece in the Forward entitled, “Why I’m Losing My Love for Israel.” It’s generated a lot of discussion and response, as you might imagine. Links to the original article, some of the follow-ups (including articles by Rabbi Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Institute and historian Jonathan Sarna), as well as a follow up by Michaelson himself, are found here.

Ha’aretz: A tribute to troubadour Chava Alberstein at the Tel Aviv music festival featured unconventional interpretations of her songs.

Soupy Sales, the boundary-breaking comedian who good-naturedly endured, by his count, more than 20,000 pies to the face, has died. He was 83. Original name: Milton Supman.

Remarks for "Religion and Homosexualty" Panel

Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
October 22, 2009

Two preliminary points: The treatment of this topic in recent years is an attempt to find a balance between the need for a legal structure to channel human impulses and the need for a compassionate approach to individuals. As our understandings of homosexuality have developed over the past 50 years, this balance has changed as well. I’ll return to this topic toward the end of my remarks, but here I would like to say that God created homosexuals and must have known what God was doing. The idea that a young person struggling with - not sexual practice, not lifestyle choice, but with identity – can be made to feel that they are somehow sinful in the eyes of God, is a tragedy, and it costs lives, and it is to the credit of various contemporary religious communities, including large portions of the Jewish community, that they have striven to revise their understandings of God’s will to make a place for lesbians and gay men in their communities.

Second: Like Christianity, Judaism has a lot of different streams which approach issues of belief and practice differently. Although the focus of my remarks will be on a particular interpretive track, this is by no means exhaustive, nor is it to say that queer Jews are looking for progressive legal interpretations to permit them to be who they are. Queer Jews will be so without worrying too much about rabbinic niceties.

Ok. Judaism is an interpretive tradition, by this I mean that, in the Jewish tradition, what is written in the Torah is filtered through an interpretive process consisting of midrash (interpretive story) and halakhah, Jewish law as construed by the rabbinic tradition. The idea that one could just read what the Torah says and take that as a meaningful guide for human behavior is not a Jewish one. For instance, in Leviticus there is a requirement that an obstinate son be taken to the gates of the city and stoned to death. I think it’s fair to say that if this were interpreted as literally as the prohibition against homosexuality has been, there would be a lot of dead teenagers. However, the rabbis interpreted this instruction in such a limiting way – in terms of age, the actual behavior in question, and the process necessary for its implementation – as to legislate it out of existence. And the same is true for many other Levitical laws, particularly the ones that call for the death penalty.

This does not mean that Torah doesn’t mean what it says, but simply that what the Torah says is the beginning of the process, not its end. There’s a midrash on the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle in the desert that I learned from my friend and colleague Rabbi Toba Spitzer, that speaks to this point. Moses asks, how will your great Presence, God, that which the entire world can't contain, fit into the limited physical structure of the mishkan? God's response is, I will diminish My Presence in order to dwell in this space, close to human beings. And the same is true for text. We can't fully understand God's reality or meaning, and all we have are small human spaces in which God's reality is diminished, in order to give us access. To put it another way, our understanding of what God is trying to teach us in a particular verse is conditional, and can change in response to our changed understandings.

The Torah is the product of its time, an attempt by our ancestors to reach for holiness and truth based on their own understandings. The rabbis, who interpreted Torah’s teachings and put them into a legal framework, did the same thing. We know that in each case some of what they wrote is true and enduring, and some of it is limited. It is our job to figure out which is which. So how do we do that?

The verses in question in Leviticus come in the context of all kinds of prohibited sexual relationships, particularly those of family members – father, mother, sister, son’s daughter, daughter’s daughter, daughter in law, brother’s wife, etc etc. There has been a bit of a cottage industry in the past few years of scholarly exploration into exactly why this prohibition was promulgated. One theory is that there was some sort of homosexual cultic practice among the surrounding peoples, and that the Israelites were being warned against participating in that. It may also be part of a general prohibition against non-procreative sexual activity, such as masturbation.

Another interpretation which I find compelling is that the prohibitions in this section of Leviticus have not so much to do with sexual behavior in and of itself but with social relationships – which is to say, property relationships. The laws of inheritance and identity as they are put forward in Torah require knowing, so to speak, who the father is. Unfortunately, this is the basis on much of religion’s historic repression of women, as well as homosexuals. Men were agents, women were property. “Your father’s wife’s nakedness is your father’s nakedness” means that you are transgressing your father’s claim to his wife – the sexual relationship and the property relationship are indistinguishable. So a man lying with a man is against the natural order of things because it would confuse this agent/property relationship. This would be why lesbian relationships are not mentioned in Torah – the powerlessness of the parties poses no threat to the clear understanding of proper social relationships.

But scholarly interpretation alone will not suffice for our purposes here. We must deal also with what the verse has always been taken to mean – how it has been interpreted rabbinically and how that interpretation has been put into action by the Jewish legal tradition known as halakhah. There’s no question that in Orthodox interpretations of halakhah, homosexual behavior is seen as prohibited. This has led to the same kinds of struggles within that community that we have seen in other strict traditions. The Reform movement is not motivated by following Jewish law, so this is not an issue for them – at least not a legal issue.

Where the really interesting process on this issue has taken place is within the Conservative movement in Judaism. The Conservative movement considers itself bound by Jewish law but is willing to be more proactive in its legal interpretations. For the past almost 20 years or so, it has been wrestling with this issue, in the form of the question of whether to admit out gays and lesbians to its rabbinical seminaries or to perform marriage ceremonies for gay or lesbian couples. I’d like to trace some of this community’s recent thinking on this matter.

One thing you need to know in advance is there are two categories of law - law which is taken from Torah, and law which was promulgated by the rabbis. They’re both binding, but Torah law is taken as more inviolable than rabbinic law. There is also a rabbinic principle known as “building a fence around Torah” – that is, prohibiting by rabbinic fiat behaviors that might lead to a transgression of a Toraitic prohibition. Many of the rabbinic prohibitions are fences built around Torah law. An example is, if one is not allowed to light candles during the Sabbath, one is not allowed to touch candlesticks either. Touching of candlesticks was not prohibited by Torah, but rather by the rabbis, attempting to make it less likely that one would accidentally break the Torah law.

So - the verse in question in Leviticus has generally been taken to be a Torah law prohibiting anal intercourse. Under the principle of building a fence around the Torah, the rabbis of the Talmudic tradition prohibited homosexual relationships generally in order to prevent the possible accidental transgression of the Torah’s prohibition against anal intercourse. Under this framework, the anal intercourse prohibition is considered torah law, and the prohibition against homosexual behavior is considered rabbinic – still binding, but not as inviolable as a torah provision.

Now we have to look at context. The Levitical author, and the classical rabbis, saw homosexual behavior as a choice - a “lifestyle”, to use the contemporary terminology - made by an individual who would otherwise be heterosexual. The prohibition against homosexual relationships was meant to push people back into heterosexual relationships. And, in fact, where bisexuality exists the halakhic inclination is to push people into covenanted heterosexual relationships. Yet today we understand, as the American Psychological Association puts it, that “human beings cannot choose their sexual orientation.” That is, sexual orientation is not behavior – sinful or not – but rather identity. Further, we know that homosexuality is not a form of mental illness, that it is not inherently harmful to individuals or their children or families, and that it is not reversible by any available therapy.

Given these facts, there are only two available choices for the gay man or lesbian under the traditional prohibitions - first, a heterosexual marriage despite homosexuality – and this, unlike homosexuality itself, is known to be harmful to both the individuals involved and their children. Or the second choice would be celibacy. Nowhere in Jewish tradition is celibacy a desired outcome. Jewish tradition has always seen the ability of a human being to be in a committed, covenantal, sexual relationship as a vital part of the happiness and fulfillment that God wants for God’s children. This is a quandary that gay men and lesbians who have wanted to live as committed Jews in a halakhic framework have had to deal with for generations, much as committed Christians with similar issues have had to deal with the intolerance of their tradition and authorities.

For the Conservative Movement’s Law Committee, the way out of this quandary was to rely on the concept of kavod habriot – the dignity of the human being. There are many examples of halakhic restrictions that are waived when their fulfillment would compromise the dignity of the person involved. This is particularly so in cases where the entire community is recognized or celebrated in a particular context, and a minority or individual is excluded, causing them shame, as is the case when homosexual members of the community are ignored or scorned.

The Conservative movement’s conclusion was basically to retain the Biblical prohibition on anal intercourse while removing the rabbinic “fence” around it which had prohibited all gay or lesbian relationships or other sexual activity. The law committee found that the dignity of the person should overrule an overly restrictive rabbinic law but not a law from Torah, which they continued to interpret in the traditional manner. But the Law Committee also stated that the observance of this prohibition would be up to the individual’s conscience, and would not be checked before allowing gay men and lesbians full involvement in communal religious activities, any more than one’s observance of Jewish dietary restrictions or restrictions on activities on the Sabbath are checked.

I happen to belong to a denomination, the Reconstructionist movement, which along with the Reform movement has been welcoming lesbians and gay men to full participation in religious life for upwards of 25 years, and supports same-sex marriage rights. I bring the example of the Conservative movement because I believe that it is a good example of a process on the part of a religious community that strives to balance the acceptance of God’s creation in all of its manifestations with the wish to stay true to Biblical truth as they understand it. This is what the Episcopalian Church has been doing as well.

I want to move toward a conclusion by saying that the holiness code is about promoting holiness, holy behaviors. The question - the only question – is, can this be applied to homosexuality?

Our understanding of the nature of homosexuality has changed in the past 50 years, let alone 3,000 years. We know now that first, homosexuality is not chosen, but rather is the result of some combination of biological and environmental influences that can determine a person’s sexuality from an early age. Second, we understand that homosexuality is not by definition degraded, to’evah – to use the Hebrew term from the text - any more than heterosexuality is. Any sexual activity can be either holy or degraded. A religious approach teaches that in order to be holy, sexuality must be channeled in sanctified ways, through dedicated partnership, mutual respect, and respect for the boundaries of commitment. And these guidelines are as available to gay men and lesbians as they are for anyone else. In fact, it would be irreligious to deny them based upon ancient prejudices.

In a midrash on the holiness code, there is a debate between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ben Azzai over what is the fundamental principle (klal gadol) of the Torah. Akiva says it is "v'ahavta l'reyecha camocha" - love your neighbor as yourself. Ben Azzai says the fundamental principle is "These are the generations of Adam" - that is, we are all descendants of the first human, and thus are all created b'tzelem elohim – in the image of God. Together, these two principles give us a measuring stick for what it means to be holy, to live a holy life.

So when we look at a particular text, or a particular legal stricture, we can ask these questions:

• Does this practice or teaching lead to greater love of one's neighbor, or the opposite?
• Does this practice or teaching affirm that which is Godly in Creation, in every human being, or deny it?

Using this principle, we can approach sacred text and tradition in a new way, making wiser choices about what laws may need to be re-interpreted or overturned, and what is God’s enduring truth.

Parshat Bereshit

This week we begin the cycle of reading the Torah once again, with Breishit, the first parshah in the book of Bereshit, or Genesis. This parshah, of course, begins with the story of creation. I find myself focusing this year on the Adam and Eve material. There are actually two stories of the creation of human beings, this one, from Gen. 1:27-28:

And God created man in God’s image, in the image of God, God created him; male and female God created them.

And this one, from chapter 2:

God formed man from the dust of the earth. God blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being … Then God said, “It is not good for man to be along; I will make a fitting helper for him”…. So God put a deep sleep upon the man, and while he slept, took one his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And God fashioned the rib God had taken from the man into a women, and brought her to the man… (Gen. 2: 7, 18, 21-22).

There are some clear differences between these two texts: in the first one, humans are created at the end of the process; in the second, at its beginning. The first story seems to indicate that the humans were created together, or even as one creature; the second one has the woman created from part of the man.

But the “Five Books of Miriam” has an interesting take on this: maybe the two stories aren’t so different after all, as in the second story the man is instructed to merge back into the woman: Gen 2:24: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.” Or as the “Five Books of Miriam” puts it: “In both cases, human wholeness depends upon a Other to complete the divine image.”

What is Genesis but the story of the development of humanity from two early specimens, to a family-clan grouping, to a people in relationship with God? What I take from this is, without relationship there is no humanity – only creatureliness. Relationship with spouse or partner; relationship with parent or child; relationship with friends and co-workers; relationship with community. The Torah is telling us that, as much as we think of ourselves as individuals, and as much as our society is based on our separate identities as individuals, we need to be in relationship – real relationship, deep relationship - in order to become fully human.

Shabbat shalom.

Inter-Faith Ministries

It was unfortunate that the kick-off press conference for this year's Operation Holiday shared space on the first page of the Local section of today's Eagle with the news that Director Emeritus Sam Muyskens had been ousted from that position after only 34 days. But though unfortunate, the placement was telling.

I want to say what I have to say about this while being careful not to betray any confidences. You see, I have friends on all sides, and I understand the actions of all sides. But I think the situation is unfortunate on a lot of levels, and could have been avoided if anyone had had any interest in avoiding it.

Sam has been a friend to the Jewish community for years, and a personal friend to me for the two-plus years I've been in Wichita. Every time I've had a project that needed interfaith support, I called Sam, and he would do what he could to help me out. When the Methodist church had an Israel-divestment resolution on its docket last year and we were trying to initiate a dialogue with local Methodist leadership, I called Sam. When Richard Cizik was coming into town for Kansas Interfaith Power & Light and I wanted to put a clergy meeting together, I called Sam. He and his wife Ellan also took part in the interfaith trip to Israel and Jordan that took place in early 2008, and when you've been through an experience like that, well, it's not something you soon forget.

As a letter in today's Eagle also stated, over the past 17 years Sam has built Inter-Faith Ministries from a small organization housed in a church into a $2 million per year operation with its footprint all over downtown. I think it's pretty clear to everyone by now that Sam's "retirement" earlier this year was actually an ouster. As much as I feel for my friend, I realize that sometimes organizations need transitions - even Moses had to be moved out of his leadership role for the people of Israel to move on to the next stage - and I don't really have a criticism about that. I also think very highly of Sue Castile, the new exec, who did a great job with Diversity Kansas and I am sure will do a great job here as well. Sam is also more of a visionary than a functionary and I would not at all be surprised if it takes Sue months or even years even to fix the org chart and make everything run more professionally.

But I liked the fact that Sam was made an emeritus, for two reasons: 1) it honored his contribution to the organization, and 2) it actually was advantageous to the organization, in that Sam has years of connections built up with faith leaders all over the city, and Sue is not a pastor, and doesn't have those connections. So Sue could work on fixing the org chart and making sure that everything flowed the way it was supposed to and Sam could go off and do his interfaith thing, which he is uniquely capable of doing. They could fill in each other's gaps, as it were.

Until this. The way I understand it, Sam was finding it difficult to restrict himself to the role he had been assigned. I have no doubt that this is true. But it had only been 34 days! Are you telling me that the only way this could be dealt with is by taking his keys and cellphone and sending him on his way? For people who are interested in maintaining the relationship, there are many steps prior to such a drastic action, up to and including mediation.

It seems clear that whoever made this decision was not interested in resolving the situation in any way other than Sam's ouster, which in turn leads one to believe that that was the intention all along. But it's a most unfortunate conclusion. It's disrespectful to Sam, who did so much for this organization. But it's also a disservice to Sue, who will be blamed for this (and will take responsibility for it) and will now find it that much harder to build relationships in the interfaith world, which is a core area of the organization's mission and was already her area of weakness.

Most of all, it's a disservice to Inter-Faith Ministries, which should be able to call attention to the fulfillment of its mission - including Operation Holiday - without soliciting tsks of regret or snarls of anger over its actions in this matter.

PS One might be inclined to say that a faith organization should be expected to treat people better. I do not make this argument, for the simple reason that I know better. If you don't know what I mean, ask your clergy, for he or she certainly does.

Simhat Torah: The End is the Beginning

Here’s an interesting website which explains the history and practices of Simhat Torah. I note this passage:

Thus the readings reassert the cycle of death-into-life at two levels: the cosmic level in which Moses' death leads straight to the creation of the world, and the historical level in which it leads straight to new leadership and the beginning of a new task. We are being taught, as it were: "The building of a new society is like the creation of a new world."

It is saying that the reading of the story of the death of Moses on Simhat Torah has resonance on two levels: in terms of the Biblical story itself, and in terms of Jewish history. In the Biblical practice (or what this passage calls “the cosmic level”), this selection is followed immediately by the beginning of Genesis, the “In the beginning…” part. Thus the end of the Torah’s story – of creation, patriarchs, slavery and Exodus, lawgiving and wandering – leads right back to its beginning again: Moses’ death leads immediately to the creation of the world.

This resonates with our experience of the yearly cycle, where the conclusion of one year’s practice leads inexorably to the next year’s, or maybe even with our experience of the Tishrei (current Jewish month, where all these holidays fall) holiday cycle, where Rosh Hashanah is followed by Yom Kippur, and the fast is broken with the building of the sukkah, which is followed by the holidays this weekend. None of it – Bible story, year cycle, or Tishrei holiday cycle – ever really comes to an end: it just goes back to the beginning, leading to the next reading, the next Shabbat, the next holiday, the next lifecycle event. They’re the same, but different. Or maybe it’s we who are the same, but different.

The second sense in which end-leads-to-beginning is the historical sense. When, in our story, Moses dies, the story doesn’t end: it goes on to the later Biblical books that take up the tale: the books of Judges, of Kings, of Prophets. And even after the Bible, the story continues to unfold, new chapter upon new chapter: Jewish communities spring up all over the world, new insight brought to the tradition, new forms of folk and cultural expression, new wisdom to our people: Ashkenaz and Spharad - eastern and western; Talmud, Zohar, Maimonides; Shalom Aleichem, Yehuda Amichai, Amos Oz.

Even at cataclysmic times in our people’s history, history doesn’t end, but the story continues: the destruction of the Temple leads to the development of the rabbinic tradition; medieval oppression leads to a flowering of mysticism, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Israel is born. Nothing “justifies” anything – as Joshua’s leadership doesn’t “justify” Moses’ death - but the story continues.

On one level, the end of the story leads right back to the beginning again. And on another level, history never ends, and every end is a new beginning. We can never really know all there is to know about our history or tradition, and we can never stop learning it, we can never stop living it. “Turn it and turn it, for everything is found within it.” These are the two perspectives that we hold, as one, on this holiday of Simhat Torah.

Shabbat shalom, and hag sameah (it’s pronounced hahg (with a guttural kh) sah-MAY-ah). But gut yontif works too!)