Rabbi Susan Grossman: April 2006 Archives

I never would have thought that two American professors from prestigious American universities would have much in common with Osama bin Laden.

But then I noticed that in the most recent tape attributed to him, Bin Laden identified those in the West seeking to halt the genocide in Darfur as "Zionist-crusaders," just on the heels of the article by University of Chicago professor John J. Mearsheimer and Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Stephen Walt, arguing that the United States Middle Eastern policy has been manipulated by the Israel lobby.

In other words, Bin Laden and the professors are all saying that Jews are pulling the strings of world leaders and if not for the Jews we wouldn’t be in this mess. (You can fill in the blank for which mess you mean at the moment, whether Palestinian’s self-destructive intransigence, Iraqi insurgency, Islamist terrorism, etc.). All three conjure up the same specter of “Jewish conspiracy” that rests at the heart of history’s most rabid expressions of anti-Semitism.

According to a compelling report by Alan Dershowitz, Mearsheimer and Walt’s paper is filled with inaccuracies and half-truths that do not support their conclusions. The most important discrepancy is that America, in fact, always makes its own decisions about what is in America’s best interest. When American interests coincide with Israeli interests, we act in concert, but when American interests do not coincide with Israeli interests, America does what it feels it needs to even over Israel’s strident objections (Jonathan Pollard and AWACs are just two examples).

But there is an even bigger issue here. The focus on Israel/Zionists/Jews turns the world away from the real questions, much as such anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism has throughout history. There are a lot of real questions lurking out there:

• What is the nature of America’s continued support for Saudi Arabia, which continues to finance Muslim extremism?
  
• What is the influence of the oil lobby over our incursion into Iraq, which gained control of oil fields but left hospitals, electric and water plants, and museums undefended and then un-repaired (allowing the insurgency to thrive), and our continued failure to make serious advances in oil conservation?
  
• Why is so little said about the fact that Muslims are slaughtering other Muslims in Dafur or that radical Muslims are expressing their xenophobia in violence against others?

Muslim extremist rage is not going to go away if Israel ceases to exist (God forbid). Muslim extremism will simply turn to the next victim. I’d recommend Mearsheimer and Walt reread the words of Protestant minister Martin Niemoller, reflecting on his experiences in Nazi Germany: “They came for the Communists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist; They came for the Socialists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist; They came for the labor leaders, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader; They came for the Jews, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Jew; Then they came for me - And there was no one left to object.”

Every group has its extremists. Jews do too. Jewish extremism remains a minority within the Jewish community, largely because of our commitment to questioning and debate, as well as our concern for the rights and well being of the stranger (themes reiterated last week at the Passover Seder).

Honest, accurate, and fair debate is always healthy. Such vibrant and vigorous debate takes place within Israel, within the American Jewish community, within the American press and public, and between Israel and its American allies. Such debate does not take place in most of the Muslim world. I wonder why that, and its impact on American policy, isn’t the subject of a Kennedy School research paper.

There are many reasons to remember and commemorate the Holocaust, which we will do this coming week around Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, April 25. Here are six reasons, each an important lesson we can learn from the Holocaust, lessons we cannot afford to forget. (They are presented in no particular order.)

One: One person can made a difference: Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial and Research Museum, has honored more than 21,310 Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives and the lives of their families to save Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Thousands of individuals survived because of their intercession. The contributions to society by these survivors, their children, and their children’s children are a direct result of such righteous intervention, reminding us of the rabbinic teaching, “If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world.”

Two: Not doing anything is an act of complicity: The Holocaust would never have happened without the millions of bystanders who stood by, or went along, when their neighbors, co-workers and classmates were first ostracized and socially and politically isolated. That is why I am sending postcards and arranging for my congregation to attend the Save Dafur Rally to Stop Genocide April 30 in Washington, D.C. What are you doing?

Three: Believe what you read in the news from reliable sources: The most chilling gallery for me in the U. S. Holocaust Museum is the one that shows the front pages of major American newspapers featuring articles recording Nazi atrocities against the Jews. Such articles prove that people knew what was happening and that the Holocaust was not inevitable, if the nations of the world had intervened by accepting refugees and seriously protesting Hitler’s plans. This leads us to the next lesson:

Four: Believe the threats of tyrants: Hitler was not shy about warning the West of his plans to destroy the Jews. This is a chilling reminder in the face of Iran’s reiteration this week to destroy Israel. Why is there any international ambivalence about serious sanctions to stop nuclear aide to Iran?

Five: The fate of all Jews is intertwined: It didn’t matter if you were right-wing or left, religious or secular, affiliated or assimilated. Every Jew was equal grist for the Nazi death machine. The Holocaust doesn’t only remind us that when Jews are threatened anywhere, Jews are endangered everywhere. It also reminds us that Jews are responsible for each other, i.e. for intervening to rescue those in need, distress or danger.

Six: The human spirit can triumph over evil: In the face of incomprehensible horror, individuals traded bread for a Passover haggadah or saved a potato to make a Hanukkah menorah. They shared their blankets and helped a bunkmate. After the war, most survivors found love, rebuilt families, and embraced life again. They gave of their time and resources to build communal and religious institutions and educate the next generation so such horror would not happen again. As their stories pass on to us, may we be inspired to take our place carrying their stories and their lessons to the generations to come.

I was wondering the other day why family gatherings for Passover are so different than those for Thanksgiving?

So many people find Thanksgiving to be an exercise in family dysfunction. In fact, an entire niche of the travel business is now catering to those escaping the drama of their family’s Thanksgiving mishegas. In contrast, Passover is still family-centered, generally lacking the psychodynamic fireworks of our more secular fall feast.

Perhaps the difference lies in what we do for these gatherings. On Thanksgiving, all there is to do is eat and talk. Without a structure or direction, family tensions and rivalries rise to the surface. If not handled tactfully, they can explode like a mishandled soufflé. Passover, on the other hand, is carefully orchestrated. There is an order to the evening. That is what the word "seder" means: order, as in the order of the service. (I am sure the four cups of wine help lend a mellow mood to the evening, as well.)

Whether one covers the entire Haggadah or selections of it, there are paragraphs to read and songs to sing. (Is it an axiom that the family who sings together, stays together?) There are questions to ask and points to debate, which gives the discussion a focus.

Indeed, the entire Passover seder is highly structured and directed. This is the power of ritual: It brings us together, bridging our differences with a shared purpose and identity. There is little time to focus on our differences when we are busy reliving what unites us. By the time we get to the free-form intermission of the meal, the ritual of the seder has worked its magic, binding us together by shared memories and experiences.

That is why I think Passover remains the last great refuge of the family feast. It is true that for some of us, the family gathered around our table may be one of friends because our own blood relatives live far away or because we have joined our fate to that of the Jewish community as converts. Nevertheless, it is within family that Passover remains most vibrant, evidenced by the role of the youngest child reading the Four Questions, to all the effort made to make the Seder engaging for the children, the next generation to carry the story into the future.

At its heart, Thanksgiving dinner is really about each of us, as individuals, and about what we each received, for which we take a sometimes guilty moment to be thankful. The ritual of the Passover seder, however, reminds us about the collective “we.”

It is about how our ancestors coped with oppression, not just in Egypt but in every age, and how we learned the hard way the importance of loving the stranger, since we know viscerally what it is like to be strangers in a strange land. It is also about how, when we stick together, we can survive almost anything, even the unthinkable.

As my mother of blessed memory would often say, “Blood is thicker than water.” That is really what family is about. While we are often attracted to the universal aspects of the Passover narrative, and justifiably so, at its heart, Passover is the story of our family, from our father, the wandering Aramean, to us sitting around the seder table this year and next.

I wasn’t surprised to read in The New York Times that Rick Warren, mega-church pastor and best-selling author of "The Purpose Driven Life," is advising Jewish religious leaders on how to draw more Jews into synagogue life. It’s very Jewish to apply and adapt the best of wider society to Judaism. That is what the early rabbinic sages did when they modeled the structure of the Passover seder upon the Roman banquet and symposium. Their model stuck, as so many of us will re-experience next week when we sit down to celebrate the holiday.

Warren has hit on something, though. I have found that when I translate what he teaches into a Jewish idiom, putting God and Torah back at the center of our experience as Jews, people really respond favorably. They really want to find answers for how to live a more meaningful life through Torah.

I can do the scientific-text critical thing with the best of them, but that is Torah for the academy, not the pews. For a small group of folks, such learning is spiritually satisfying. But, particularly in the Conservative movement, which was founded upon the scientific method of textual study, we all too often lose the essential point that God gave us Torah to inform how we can live better lives.

Shabbat is part of that better life, but most contemporary Jews never get a chance to really experience it. So if meditation, yoga, or cooking will open the doors of the synagogue to those who might not otherwise enter, I say go for it.

We have a lot of boring memories to overcome. But we will miss the boat if we do not also offer engaging classes and painless parallel parent/child education that builds Hebrew literacy, comprehension, and the tools of prayer competency as a way to open modern Jews to the power and transcendence of the traditional Sabbath liturgy. Sure I would be happy with folks being in the building, some for a study group, others for our family programs, others for the fellowship in the kitchen, while still others are engaged in the main worship service. Nine tenths of community is about showing up. But a purpose-driven community is about more than just showing up. It is about sharing values and living those values in and outside the sanctuary.

That’s what has been missing in most of our congregations; it is high time we honestly face that and do the hard work to get back on track by defining our core Torah-based values, like truth (emet) and kindness (hesed) to name just two, and start living them in and out of the synagogue.

We need to put the “purpose” back into our synagogues. That means instead of seeking growth for growth’s sake (i.e., for institutional solvency or sustainability) we need to seek to serve God and spread the word of living Torah. We need to reach out and engage other Jews because that is what God expects of us, whether in inviting a stranger for Shabbat dinner or lunch, being there for people in pain, or being God’s hands in the world to help those in need in our communities or in far away Darfur.

We could argue that Jews today, perhaps more than previous generations, want to know what Judaism can do for them, rather than what they can do for Judaism. Rebbe Nahman taught that one must meet someone where he (or she) is, not where you may want that person to be.

The brilliance of Warren’s approach, and why he has sold so many books, is that he shows how doing something for a higher purpose is doing something for oneself on the deepest and simplest level. That is what Judaism has always been about. The key is realizing that we Jews can have a purpose-driven life, as individuals and as members of congregational communities, by serving God through Torah. Now all that’s left is to go and learn.