Rabbi Susan Grossman: January 2006 Archives

Here are my top four reasons American Jews should care deeply and passionately about Israel:

1) Security.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg argues that absolute powerlessness corrupts as completely as absolute power because it invites persecution.

Jewish history is a catalogue of such powerlessness: expulsions, pogroms, blood libels…

The early Zionists understood that a sovereign Jewish state was the only answer to the cyclical, but unending vulnerability and persecution of a powerless Jewish people.

If Israel existed just 10 years earlier, Europe’s Jews not only would have found haven from Hitler’s ovens, Israel would have taken out the ovens.

Where other nations may be immobilized by “mitigating” concerns, Israel remains committed to the well being of the Jewish people everywhere, even here.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

2) Identity.

Jews are not just adherents of a religion. We are a family, and Israel is our ancestral home. As such, Israel evokes the warmth of nostalgia, a longing for sights, sounds, and smells that we may only know from stories or the deep recesses of our souls.

Israel is the place we can most deeply and fully be ourselves.

There is nothing like being in Israel during Hanukkah and seeing the menorahs blazing in every town square, home, and store window. Israel is our true home, and we are stronger inside ourselves when we nourish that connection.

3) Covenant.

Longing for the land of Israel is perhaps the oldest covenantal tradition of Judaism, older than brit milah. The land of Israel links us with our past and our future. It links us with each other and with God. It provides us with spiritual transcendence.

Our passion for Israel contributes to the ongoing relationship between God and the Jewish people. Whenever we support Israel, financially, politically, economically, or emotionally, we are helping to keep the covenant between God and the Jewish people alive.

4) Hope.

Israel is all about hope: the hope that a ragged band of slaves, or survivors, could build a life of dignity and independence; the hope that the desert could bloom, the hope, currently much strained, that enemies can someday become friends.

I saw this most clearly last summer on our synagogue mission to Israel. On the Golan Heights, I was surprised by a profusion of statues lining the path to the defensive bunkers. Our guide explained that the fields had been covered with the remains of destroyed tanks after the ’73 Yom Kippur War. Israeli soldiers had converted the blasted metal pieces into these whimsical statues. The modern equivalents of swords were beaten not just into plowshares but into life-affirming art.

Anything is possible as long as hope remains alive. The very existence of Israel is a symbol of the hope not only that the Jewish people will survive but that someday every human being will be able to sit in safety and satisfaction under his or her vine and fig tree.

Israel protects us. Israel unites us. Israel gives us purpose. Israel gives us hope in a better future. What happens to Israel will affect us, whether or not we care about it or think it will. But if we do care, if we do think about it, if we participate in its wellbeing, we will be the ones to gain the most, through the inner strength, the communal connection, the spiritual fulfillment, and the energy to go on, even in the face of set backs. All this becomes possible through the promise and miracle of Israel, our Promised Land.

Thank God U.S. District Court Judge John Jones III ruled that intelligent design (ID) is not science and therefore has no place in the classroom. Thank God that the concerned parents in Dover, PA, had the courage to fight their school board on this issue. Our constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state and the disestablishment of religion are only as secure as we make them by our vigilance and participation in the political process.

That said, what are we, as Jews, to believe during this brouhaha about science, faith and evolution?

Ironically, the very science that is under attack by the “faithful” strengthens my own faith.

That a biblical story thousands of years old even loosely reflects the steps that science, in the form of Darwin’s theory of evolution, has uncovered, seems incredible, unless the biblical text was inspired by the very creator responsible for these events. (How else would an ancient people have conceived of such a thing?)

The whole six, 24-hour, day program, of course, seems clearly metaphoric: God’s sense of time is certainly not our own. I chalk up minor discrepancies between the evolutionary record and the biblical text to the way God needed to communicate in a simple manner to an ancient people. Nevertheless, to me, the seeds of evolutionary theory are there in the biblical text, as simple life forms are followed by more complex life forms. Darwin’s theory merely exposes how God’s hand worked behind the scenes throughout prehistory, as it so often has done throughout human history.

If that sounds like ID, in a way it is, because I believe in God as creator of the world. But that doesn’t mean I think ID belongs in the classroom. I believe there is a difference between personal piety and communal polity, between being an honest observer of the world while retaining one’s own personal faith and foisting one’s own faith upon others.

The most important point of the creation story, though, has nothing to do with science or the (pre)historical reliability of the biblical text. It has to do with the values that make the Bible eternally sacred and relevant.

In particular, these values are found in one little word that appears repeatedly in the Creation story: the word “good.” The physical world is good and was created for good.

Our lives here have a God-given value, meaning, purpose, and responsibility: to actualize that good in the world. That is the essence of the Jewish reading of Scripture. All the rest is commentary.

Why is it that those who seek to make peace don’t get to fulfill their vision?

Pat Robertson would answer that peace at the cost of giving away parts of “Greater Israel” is a sin, so God struck down Yitzhak Rabin (with a little help from assassin Yigal Amir and the fundamentalist rabbis who labeled Rabin a traitor) and now Ariel Sharon (though I am sure Sharon’s weight didn’t help).

Robertson’s comment reminds us that Christian fundamentalists can easily turn fair-weather friends if Israel refused to play its part in their apocalyptic vision.

On the other hand, I really feel for Robertson. It’s so tempting to read everything through a theological lens.

On hearing Sharon had suffered a debilitating stroke, my first reaction was a despairing, and somewhat angry, plea on high: “God, what are You doing?” A clear center was coalescing around Sharon. Peace seemed possible, even lacking a serious Palestinian peace partner.

On reflection, though, how could I see God’s hand in Sharon’s illness? If God holds each life equally precious, then God wouldn’t be more concerned with the well-being of a head of state than the young mother dying from cancer or AIDS. Actually, God would be just as concerned about all of them.

I don’t know why God doesn’t intervene in the world, instead leaving it to us to heal the sick, care for the vulnerable, and create a just and peaceful world. As Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, what God does do is give us the strength to go on, even when we feel we cannot. And somehow Israel will go on, too.

Jewish Scripture does read God acting in history, sometimes obviously (as in the Book of Exodus) and sometimes behind the scenes through human agency (as in the Book of Esther). We believe God continues to deeply care for humanity. Therefore, our prayer books call the founding of Israel reishit tzmihat g’ulateinu (the beginning of the realization of redemption). That a small nation survived the onslaught of the united Arab world in 1948, and has continued to survive in the face of unending hostilities, is a miracle to me.

But Scripture is not about what God does for us as much as what we are to do for God, and by extension, God’s world. Our sages taught that, at times, we should all be atheists, lest we think that God would feed the hungry or care for the poor, instead of ourselves.

Scripture is about how to live our lives, through actions great and small, consistent with certain values: the sanctity of life, the dignity due each individual, the commitment to equal justice for citizen and stranger alike, the obligation to be our neighbors keepers…Such values inspired the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, my emeritus of blessed memory Rabbi Noach Golinkin, and so many others to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. (Micah 6:8)

If humility is a virtue, does that make hubris a sin?

I wonder if Robertson, and the folks like him who identify appropriate victims for divine wrath, ever wonder if they might just be getting God’s message wrong.

My top pick for recent divine wrath would have been Yasser Arafat. I’m surprised that Pat didn’t consider the debilitating illness that led to Arafat’s death as divinely inflicted punishment. I guess Pat’s God only has it in for Middle East peace-makers, not obstructionists.

The only thing I understand about God is I don’t understand God. By definition, I can’t, since God’s nature is beyond human comprehension. That’s why, instead of worrying about what God is doing, I worry about what we’re doing to further justice, mercy, and humility in our world.

Judaism is a pro-life religion. It sees all life as precious, including the potential life represented in the fetus. The stirring of life is a miracle, a gift from God. All things being equal, a fetus should be brought to term and welcomed into life.

However, what happens when the fetus poses a threat to the life or health of its mother? Jewish law is unambiguous: The mother’s life and health take precedence. Why? The medieval Jewish sage Rashi (1040-1105) explains that the fetus is not a person. According to Jewish law, personhood begins at birth (defined as when the head or majority of the body exits the mother into the air) and not before. When their needs conflict, the actual or independent life takes precedence over the potential life.

Maimonides offers a different explanation: the fetus is a rodef, a pursuer, endangering the mother, and thus it must be stopped by force, if necessary, even at the cost of its “life.”

Both views are helpful in light of the current debate over abortion, and by extension, the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

Rashi reminds us that different religions define human life differently. The Catholic Church and Christian Right, who are driving legislative efforts to restrict abortion, ultimately want abortion outlawed, because they define human life as beginning with conception. Protecting choice, then, is part of protecting freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. That is why Judaism's Conservative Movement, while not pro-abortion, is pro-choice, and is a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.

Judge Alito’s former clerk, Jeffrey Wasserstein, argued in a recent op-ed piece that Jews have nothing to worry about from Alito’s stand on freedom of religion. That may or may not be so. However, we have plenty to worry about regarding whether he will protect a woman’s life and health.

Maimonides’ position reminds us that the lives and health of real woman are at stake in the abortion debate.

Take the small percentage of women who learn late in their pregnancy that their fetuses have severe hydrocephaly (swelling of the brain). Such a fetus will not survive, and the woman cannot survive giving birth because the fetal head is too large. The safest procedure is an intact d and x (inaccurately labeled a “partial-birth abortion”). However, unless the law banning this procedure is struck down by the Supreme Court, these women face the much more dangerous hysterotomy, requiring a larger incision than a caesarean and carrying such a high morbidity rate that the procedure was largely dropped once the intact d and x was developed. If these women survive this outmoded surgery, they face the likelihood of never being able to carry another pregnancy. because of the danger of uterine rupture.

Maimonides, as a doctor and a rabbi, would rule that the health of these women takes precedence in this tragic situation. Judge Alito probably would not agree, based upon his dissenting opinion on Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where he argued that the needs of a small minority of women are insufficient to be considered “undue hardship” in terms of the constitutional protections limiting restrictions on abortion. (The Washington Post's Nov. 7, 2005, editorial provides a clear explanation of the disturbing meaning of this opinion.)

Our concerns are even greater in the case of parental notification (also currently before the Supreme Court in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, a challenge to New Hampshire's parental notification law). In the best of all situations, we would want a minor under 18 to inform her parents. However, what happens to the young woman from an abusive home? What if she is having a medical emergency?

If every human life is really precious, then shouldn’t the lives of these women (and the married women in abusive relationships excluded by Alito in the Casey case) be equally precious regardless of aggregate numbers involved? Whose right to life are we talking about here?

The Supreme Court will be deciding the legality of legislation that endangers real women’s right to life. Do we want that decision made by someone who does not value the right to life of every individual woman? I sure don’t.

The question is not only whether or not Judge Alito would overturn Roe v. Wade (as important a question as that is), but also whether, with him on the bench, the court will remain the last recourse and protection against the abuse of legislative or executive power and the tyranny of the majority of the minority.

What Jack Abramoff did is a shanda. It is unethical and illegal. On top of the laundry list of legal counts against him, Abramoff used racist and defamatory language about his Native American clients. Nice Jewish boys shouldn’t do such things, because it is just plain wrong; because, historically, the actions of any one Jew can be misused to reflect poorly on Judaism and the Jewish community; and because he should know better as a member of a People who have all too often been similarly defamed. That he presented himself as a nice Jewish boy just makes the shanda all the worse.

The biggest shanda, though, is that he didn’t have a sense of the shanda value of what he was doing. If he did, he wouldn’t have done it.

A story is told about a young boy who hitched a ride with a wagoneer on his way to Warsaw. Along the way, the wagoneer passed a field of hay. He stopped the wagon and asked the boy to call him if he saw anyone because he wanted to take some of the hay while no one was looking. As soon as the man reached the field, the young boy began hollering. The wagoneer raced out of the field, hopped onto the wagon and urged his horses into a gallop. After seeing that no one was following, the wagoneer slowed down and, turning to the boy, asked who had seen him in the field. The young boy answered with only one word: “God.”

It is not enough to be concerned about the shanda value of doing something only if one gets caught. Then, like Jack Abramoff, or the wagoneer, you can try to get away with something as long as you think no one knows or can catch you or cares enough to protest it. There is a shanda test that each of us is held to in our public and private lives, by God if not by our neighbors, co-workers, or co-conspirators: whether we do the right thing even when no one is looking. Jack Abramoff failed that test long before he was caught, as did all those who profited along with him.