Rabbi Susan Grossman: March 2006 Archives

Where should we stand on immigration reform?

If not for the closed-door policies and quotas held by America and other countries barring Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe, the Holocaust would not have claimed its millions of victims. As Jews, we understand that part of our job is to protect the weak and persecuted, which sometimes means providing save haven and refuge. That is why Israel has a history of welcoming innocent refugees, whether the Cambodian boat people, the Christian Lebanese, or such breakaway sects from Islam as the Bahai and Ahmayeds, all of whom have found safety from persecution within Israel’s borders.

Being a safe haven does not preclude being concerned about security. Indeed, successful reform should not only include ways to tighten the process for vetting immigrants to make sure that potential terrorists do not enter the country but should also create the conditions that would close down our porous borders through fair and reasonable visiting worker and political refugee options.

However, America’s history of xenophobia ill serves us here. It is more than the fact that we are a nation of immigrants, because one person’s immigrant is another person’s stranger.

As Jews, we know what it is like to be strangers. Our whole religion is built upon this essential ethical leitmotif: Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt. We are to make sure the stranger is treated fairly, because we know what it is like not to be. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, which is why more synagogues should be joining other faith-based organizations to offer food and other aid to the illegal immigrants we see suffering within our midst.

But there is another issue of justice here as well: the fact that agriculture, travel, and other significant businesses build their profits on substandard salaries that could not reasonably support America’s working poor and therefore attract illegal immigrants who seek to escape the squalor of even worse poverty across the border. Reforms to allow visiting workers may be reasonable, but they will not be just unless they also address minimum standards for pay and fair treatment of the strangers coming to us with dreams for a better life for themselves and their children--dreams similar in some ways to those shared by our own parents, grandparents, and great grandparents who came to these same shores.

We should never have gone into Iraq unprepared and under false pretenses. If we had waited for the inspectors to do their thing, if we had waited for the support staff to be in place to bring back electricity and water right away and to actually secure the country, the resistance would never have found fertile soil in which to grow.

The Talmud teaches, if you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world. Flip this lesson over and we learn that if you are responsible for the deaths of others, it is as if you have destroyed many whole worlds. According to Jewish law, there are times to take another’s life, but only in the defense of oneself or others.

From my point of view, President Bush is guilty of a great sin for which he will some day be called to account: the sin of hubris that has resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of soldiers and thousands of civilians. I would add to hubris, incompetence, for I wonder how many of our soldiers--the sons and daughters, spouses, and parents of the now-bereft--would still be alive if they had just been given adequate armament and adequate planning.

That said, I also have to admit that I do not believe we can merely pull out of Iraq. This is more than an issue of “you break it you fix it.” As a result of the Bush administration’s failures, Iraq has actually become what Bush initially misled us about: it has become the newest battleground in the war on terror.

Israel has been fighting that war for a long time, not necessarily successfully if we measure success by the elimination of terror. (Though the security barrier, for all its faults, has significantly reduced terror in Israel and saved lives as a result.) But I would argue that Israel’s failure to win the war on terrorism is largely due to the continued failure of will of the world community, which continues to provide both passive and active support for terrorist networks and their public faces.

What we learn from Jewish history is that evil, if unchecked, will continue to spread until it reaches a critical mass that envelops the known world. The Talmud discusses a town that is threatened with destruction unless a certain person is handed over. The rabbis rule that the town is to stand fast rather than give in to such threats, even if it means the destruction of the town, so that tyranny (we can substitute here terrorism) would not spread through the world. At this point, pulling out of Iraq would just allow the cancer of terrorism to spread.

Among our most repeated prayers in Jewish liturgy are prayers for peace. Yet, the Book of Eccelesiates writes: “There is a …time for war and a time for peace.”

Sometimes war is a necessary prelude to peace. If we back away now, in the face of the terrorism in Iraq, we will merely be opening the gate for terrorism to continue to spread in ways we may not even be able to imagine. But we need to fight this war in wiser ways than this administration has shown itself capable of.

South Beach. Atkins. Low Carb. Each diet has its proscriptions and restrictions. Each has its high-cost items that begin to add up when you eat them every day, whether snack bars or supplements. Though I doubt a study was done, my guess is that Jews are no different than the rest of the population in being willing to give up personal autonomy for the purported benefits of a better lifestyle.

Don’t get me wrong: Eating in a healthy way is important. Despite all the schmaltz (fat) in tradition Ashkenazi (European) Jewish cooking which might imply otherwise, Judaism does hold us responsible for taking care of our health. (All those heavy dishes were created during a time when people were generally underfed, so having a nice fat-laden latke on a holiday was nirvana, to mix metaphors a bit.)

But I think many people are missing out on the oldest time tested diet in history: kashrut, better known as the kosher laws.

Think about it, about what you eat, I mean. That is the basic premise behind the kosher laws. Before we put something in our mouths, or in our cookware, we are to think about what we are about to eat.

At the heart of the kosher laws is the idea of self control. We are distinguished from animals because we can exert self-aware choice over our instinctual drives. We use our cognitive functions to distinguish--between kosher and unkosher, between milk and meat. We pour out the blood, because it represents the life force that only God can give.

We are supposed to slaughter the animal in the least painful way possible, because even animals are God’s creatures. If we show such concern for the life and pain of animals, the thinking goes, we will also show a similar, if not greater, concern for our fellow human beings.

Taken in this light, the kosher laws really are a diet for the soul.

Of course, the real reason we observe the kosher laws is because they are in the Torah as commandments from God. There are four Torah commandments: Leviticus 11:3, to eat only animals that chew their cud and have split hooves (cows and sheep, and even farm raised buffalo and deer, are kosher); Leviticus 11:9, to eat only sea life that have fins and scales (fish, not shellfish or shark); Leviticus 17: 10-11, not to eat the blood with the meat; and Exodus 23:19, not to mix milk and meat. (Admittedly, this last verse does not literally prohibit mixing all meat and milk but its observance is so ancient that, by the time of the rabbis, this basic principle was taken as a given.) If we want to, we can also count a fifth commandment in the prohibition of eating the sciatic nerve based on the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:33.) These four (or five) steps are a great place to start one’s Jewish journey. Think of it as an exploration of soul food.

Even with the great variety of kosher food now available even in remote areas, it can be complicated and inconvenient to eat kosher at times. But it is probably a whole lot easier than a low-carb diet. And the rewards are immeasurably greater: connection to generations of Jews reaching back for thousands of years; a sense of spiritual discipline in service to God; and a honing of one’s self-control, which is really at the heart of any hope any of us may have for enlightenment.

Purim is visceral. We yell, stamp our feet and wave noisemakers like crazy to drown out the name of the villain, Haman, who sought to kill every Jewish man, woman and child. If only it were that easy to make the real bad guys, the Osama bin Laden’s of the world, disappear.

There is something cathartic about drowning out the name of the bad guy and of coming to the end of the story knowing that the good guys win in the end. It sublimates our sense of fear and vulnerability in the face of the unknown into a sense of hope. Who needs the Left Behind series when we have Purim?

But, I would suggest, the real power of Purim doesn’t come from the sense of relief, and release, it generates. Just as Esther hid her true identity in the palace, so too the true power of Purim is hidden in the small parcels of candy, pastries (the three cornered hamenstashen) and charity coins we are to give to friends and families (mishloach manot) and to the poor (matanot evyonim). These gifts are among the most ancient observances of the holiday, included in the Book of Esther (9:22). These gifts transform the anger and potential for violence, that might otherwise be a natural by product of the discrimination and injustice outlined in the Book of Esther, into acts of compassion, in caring for friends and neighbors and, especially, in giving food and funds to the poor. There are times when we have to defend ourselves, as Chapter 9 of the Book of Esther also relates.

However, the age-old power of Purim comes from the lesson, still relevant today, that memories of injustices suffered can transform the world for good if they fuel acts of kindness to others.

Perhaps, as the Israeli children’s song states, it would be nice if Purim could come every week and not just once a year. As it is, we will just have to do our best to charge ourselves up with the power of Purim so it can last us throughout the year.

Why is it that when we might die if caught observing our traditions we hold them precious, but when we can freely observe them we all too easily abandon them?

Take brit milah, ritual circumcision, and the debate over whether Jews should continue circumcising their sons.

The question isn’t whether we, as parents, are willing to have our children undergo some pain for a greater good. Most of us take our kids for their immunizations even though the shots are painful. I remember my son cried a whole lot longer and harder with his DPT shots than he did at his brit milah, where he cried a little when he was held down. The circumcision itself was over before he let out another peep.

So the real question is whether brit milah is one of those greater goods we want for our sons.

Some scientific studies show that circumcision protects against STD’s and certain types of cancer and infections for men and the women they are with. Others argue that careful and consistent personal hygiene ameliorates such concerns, though the operative words are careful and consistent. But the greater good here is not really about physical health as much as spiritual health.

For thousands of years, beginning with Abraham’s circumcision of his son, Isaac, Jewish parents have ritually circumcised their sons on the eighth day after birth. Observing this important tradition has not always been easy. The Books of the Maccabees, for example, recount how women caught circumcising their babies were executed, along with their babies, the rest of their families and the mohalim who had done the circumcisions (I Mac. 1:60). This was one reason for the Maccabean revolt we celebrate on Hanukkah.

Why was ritual circumcision so important to them? Because it is an indelible sign of our acceptance of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. This sign is in the flesh for several reasons: It symbolizes the reality that we are, and can be, more than just the lusts and instincts of our body.

Circumcision reminds us that we can direct even this strongest of impulses, the sexual drive, to holy ends, in how, when, and with whom we relate on intimate terms. Circumcision also symbolizes the responsibility each of us has to perfect creation. Even the child when born requires some perfection, here in the circumcision. The eighth day also represents this as the day beyond the seven days of creation, reflecting the potential of each child to perfect the world and bring messianic days of peace and plenty.

For me, the most important reason I gave my son a brit milah was because I wanted him to be joined to the great link between God and the Jewish people in a visceral and very personal way that will be with him for life. It is the greatest gift I could give him after birth itself.

It is true we have no such ancient or equivalent ceremony for girls. (In my congregation, we celebrate a girls’ welcome into the covenant as a brit bat with candles, reflecting the covenant of the pieces God made with Abraham, and, on the Sabbath, using the Torah, the study of which girls were so long excluded from.) However, that does not take away from the power and importance of brit milah for our sons.

Sometimes what is precious when someone had to die for it remains precious even when we are free to observe it.