Remarks Against Executive Order 13888

(The following was delivered as an address on January 8, 2020, at an Interfaith Immigration Coalition vigil for refugees in front of the U.S. District Courthouse in Greenbelt, MD, on behalf of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.)

Good morning. I’m here today representing T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

We know, all of us here, that Executive Order 13888 is unconstitutional, just another example of the Trump Administration’s cruelty and xenophobia.

As a rabbi, I know this not only because I know wrong and right. I feel this in my bones, in pain from a past in which my people’s lives were scarred over and again by the trauma of dislocation and rejection.

There I am, yakking in the cold. Y’all, it was windy, and dress shoes are not shoes for demonstrating in.

For more twenty-five-hundred years, the Jewish people have known what it means to be adrift. We have long known what it is to be ejected from one home and forced to find a new one — only to have our new home reject us simply for who we are. That experience as refugees inspired the creation nearly 140 years ago of HIAS, one of the parties to today’s lawsuit. It continues to inspire HIAS’s work today on five continents on behalf of refugees from around the world.

As Jews, we know it is our duty to welcome refugees, and to ensure their well being once they make our country their home. It is with us from ancient times. The book of Leviticus says it plainly: “when a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your own citizens” (Lev. 18:33 – 34). Yet this administration, hiding behind a mask of piety, shows its true face when it encourages state and local governments to discriminate against refugees.

The Biblical book of Lamentations reminds us — all of us — that we know what it is for our eyes to be spent with tears, to feel our hearts in tumult (Lam. 2:11). We know what happens when refugees are left to languish, and we know what we must do: welcome the stranger and ensure their security. We know what we must do: dry the tears and soothe the grief-worn hearts of those who become our neighbors.

Executive Order 13888 makes a mockery of these values. And so, on behalf of my rabbinic and cantorial colleagues at T’ruah, I call on the court to stop the Trump administration’s latest act of bigotry toward those who seek security — for no reason other than that welcoming the stranger is, simply, right.

May this administration come to understand all this, speedily and in our days.

Thank you.

(For more on the lawsuit that this demonstration supported, see the complaint filed in the case.)

Living in an Age of Anger

(This was delivered on September 30, 2019, as a Rosh Hashanah address to the congregation I serve, Machar, The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism.)

We’ve come to the part of our proceedings where the rabbi talks at you for a while.

Before I begin, I need to let you know that we’re talking about anger, and we’ll be talking about trauma. I won’t be going into deep detail, but — if you find that you need space, or need to step out, please do what you need to take care of yourself.

Every year that I’ve led High Holidays services — here, in Indiana and Arizona as a student rabbi — I’ve been asked, “What if I can’t forgive?” Sometimes it’s asked simply as a matter of curiosity. But often, that question isn’t the real question that’s bothering someone when they ask.

Often, the real question is whether it’s okay to be angry. Because we’re angry often: sometimes over small things, sometimes over not-so-small things. Many of us here today are at least a little angry almost all the time, as we — and I include myself in this group — watch the ever-accelerating betrayal of the values we thought our society stood for.

Well, maybe not this kind of angry.

Dancing at Three Weddings — A Rosh Hashanah Talk

The following is the written version of my Rosh Hashanah talk at the congregation I serve, Machar, The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism.

There’s an old Yiddish proverb that goes, “With one tuchus, you can’t dance at two weddings.” That makes sense, except maybe for when twins get married at the same time.

So what happens if one tuchus tries to dance at three weddings? I’ll give you a hint: look around. The answer is in this room.

You get Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Secular, humanistic, Judaism. Three weddings. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Jeffrey Falick, says it’s two weddings. I’m not so sure it’s just two.

Be Like Eli…A Little Bit

Humanistic Jew, Jr., when I return from an outing, often greets me with, “Dad! You’re back!” And I’m not your dad, but I’m back!

Where have I been? My teaching load exploded last year on top of regular work and rabbi school, so my opportunities to write non-work things and stay sane have been few and far between. Stacked on top of regular work, editing work, and all the other stuff, well…Alexander Hamilton’s example to the contrary, we can’t all “write like [we’re] running out of time.” But I’m still kind of non-stop.

(And there’s my little Easter Egg for “Hamilton” fans.)

Okay, now, part of what I have been doing is working on term papers and projects. Among the things I’m working on is some lifecycle ceremonial material for individuals with chronic–not critical, but ongoing and life-affecting–illness. And that’s what this post is really about.

In rabbinic Jewish practice, there’s a commandment to visit the sick, biqqur cholim. The oft-identified basis for biqqur cholim is the story of Abraham at Mamre in Genesis 18, part of a Talmudic discussion on imitatio dei: “The Holy One, Blessed Be He, visited the sick, as it is written, ‘And Yahweh appeared to him at the oaks [sometimes, “plains”] of Mamre’ (Gen. 18:1)–so should you visit the sick.” b. Sotah 14a. Abraham is considered by the rabbis of the Talmud to be sick because Genesis 18 follows immediately upon the narrative in which the Torah portrays Abraham circumcising himself and all the males traveling with him. Abraham is thus sick–i.e., in pain from having recently been circumcised–and, shunting aside the plain text of the narrative in which Abraham and Sarah end up doing work for their visitors as rabbinic textual interpretation is wont to do, the rabbis portray the appearance of messengers as a visit by God to the ill Abraham.

And, I guess, we could interpret it that way. But in working on the question of a lifecycle ceremony, this narrative is far from satisfying as an example. It doesn’t take free interpretation of a text to know that visiting the sick is a good thing to do, after all. And if we take the rabbis’ premise in Sotah 14a about Abraham at face value, Abraham and Sarah scrambling to play host so that the messengers can tell Abraham about the imminent conception of Isaac isn’t exactly the ideal paradigm for visiting a sick person.

And so, looking for a better example, I remembered the story of Hannah and Eli in I Samuel 1. (It is, as it happens, another of the Bible’s numerous conception stories. Genesis 18 is one; Judges 13, the beginning of the story of Samson, is another; and so, too, is I Samuel 1.) As the story goes, Hannah has not born her husband, Elkanah, any children, and she is much aggrieved by this–particularly because Elkanah’s other wife mocks Hannah as a result of her childlessness. And so, on a trip to the temple of Yahweh at Shiloh, Hannah prays silently, her lips moving, requesting that she bear a male child for Elkanah.

The priest at the temple, Eli, sees Hannah, concludes that she must be drunk, and tells her to stop drinking. (Literally, “set aside from yourself your wine”; the New JPS translation more artistically translates this as “Sober up!,” which I actually kind of like.) Hannah explains that she has been praying and is aggrieved, but doesn’t tell Eli why that is so. Eli then tells Hannah to go in peace and that he hopes the God of Israel grants her prayer.

Hannah presenting Samuel to Eli by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout (ca. 1665)

Why this story as a model, rather than the story of Abraham at Mamre? Well, if you’re looking for a lifecycle ceremony, there is often a communal dimension to such ceremonies, and the Hannah/Eli interaction comes in a public context: at the temple in Shiloh. It holds additional communal dimension because it’s an interaction with the closest thing to clergy: a temple priest. And it involves the kind of final blessing that often has to come along with illness: a hope that the thing desired comes to pass, without guaranteeing it or suggesting that one’s merit will determine whether the problem will be corrected.

This story also illustrates a no-no. Eli’s assumption that Hannah is drunk is a bad example of what to do in this kind of interaction. As it happens, the term biqqur cholim is well chosen: it’s visiting the sick, not chastising the sick.

So, as the title of this post says: be like Eli…a little bit.

The Bone in the Butcher’s Neck

For a while now, I’ve held back on making a comment about an article in Tablet Magazine. The more time I spend thinking about the article, the more I feel that it’s necessary to write something about it. It first appeared around Yom Kippur in the wake of the disputes over refugees from Syria. In the wake of the attacks on Paris, I was drawn back to this draft post.

Here’s the article I’m responding to, by Liel Leibovitz. It’ll open in a new tab or browser window. Go ahead and read Leibovitz’s article. I’ll be here, waiting. (You do have to read it to understand what follows.)

You’re back? Good.

Who’s a Jew? Maybe you!

I’m still working on another post that I think says things that need saying about a fundamental tension in modern liberal Judaisms. But I’m taking a moment here to put down a marker on a different issue–Jewish identity.

A post by Elad Nehorai at Hevria, entitled “On Loving Jews Who Aren’t Jews,” is making the rounds and provoking considerable anger. (Elad Nehorai also blogs as Pop Chassid.) Hevria’s “About” page includes the following:

We are a group devoted to spreading the idea of positive creation in a spiritual context. We want to make this world beautiful. And we want you to join us.

This statement has proven itself to be a little ironic in the last few days as Nehorai’s “On Loving Jews Who Aren’t Jews” has made its rounds.

Why?

When the Casseroles Don’t Come

If you’ve been following the blog for a little while, you know that Humanistic Jew, Jr., was hospitalized last year. (If you didn’t know this, now you do. I’ve been open about it. April 30 was the one-year anniversary of the start of the first of two hospitalizations.) He was in a behavioral health (that’s the nice way of saying, “suicides, overdoses, and other acute psychiatric problems”) facility twice over the course of a month.

I haven’t mentioned that while there were people who were there for us, there were people we thought would be there for us but who were decidedly not.

It was isolating. That was made worse by what treament was like.

What Can We Do with the Holiness Code? A Humanistic Jewish Reading

James Tissot’s “Two Priests Destroyed,” depicting the deaths of Nadav and Avihu (image from Wikipedia)

(Warning: this is a long read.) The Torah has lots of laws. Lots of them. And in the traditional Torah-reading cycle, we’re neck-deep in them.

These laws make using the Bible today more than a little problematic.

In Advance of Jewish Disability Awareness Month: There Are No Four Children

Hey, all, guess what? It’s January. That means next month is Jewish Disability Awareness Month! And wouldn’t you know it? This week’s Torah portion on the traditional cycle is Parshat Bo.

Used under Creative Commons license

I know, I know, you’re thinking, “And…so?” But Bo contains this nugget:

And it will happen, when you come to the land which Yahweh, your god, is giving you–just as he said–that you will take care to perform this worship [the Passover lamb and blood]. And it will happen that your children will say to you, “What is this worship to you”? And you will reply, this is the Passover sacrifice for Yahweh, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt. (Ex. 12:25-27a)

Notably, this is the statement of the “wicked” child in the Passover Seder.

Baruch Dayan Emet? Try Again.

Yahrzeit Candle customarily lit on the anniversaries of loved ones’ deaths.

It is customary among many Jews when hearing of another’s bereavement to say “Baruch dayan emet,” which translates to “Blessed is the True Judge.” (That judge would be Yahweh.) It comes from the blessing that halakhah requires mourners to recite upon hearing of the death of certain relatives: baruch ata adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam, dayan ha-emet (“Blessed are you Lord our God, King of the Universe, the True Judge”).

For some, giving a condolence with baruch dayan emet is a reflexive thing; for others, it’s a consciously Jewish response to bereavement.

It’s also a very problematic thing to say.