September 2009 Archives

A just released survey by the American Jewish Committee reports that for the first time ever, a majority of American Jews support using military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Are you part of that 56% and if so, why. Are you part of the 36% opposed to such an operation? How come?

Rather than take a stand on this one just yet, I am curious to hear what you have to say about this hot topic, whether you are Jewish or not. In light of President Obama's United Nations speech last week and the unanimous resolution of the Security Council about ending all nuclear proliferation, this topic is going to shape American and global military policy in powerful ways. So what do you think we should do?

I will post a Newsweek/Washington Post On Faith article I wrote yesterday, a little later. It deals with the fact that the entire issue of nuclear arms is more complicated than simply getting rid of all nuclear weapons, or simply identifying "good guys" and "bad guys". But until then, I want to know who thinks that this is something over which we should go to war.

Using one's iPhone as a prayer tool is not necessarily a bad thing. But feeling that it's necessary to pray, or even to get one's prayers to the Kotel, the Western Wall, is. I'll explain, but a bit of background first from the Washington Post's God in Government column:

It was only a matter of time. There's now a prayer app for the iPhone. You can send a prayer via the app to be printed out and placed on the Western Wall in Jerusalem. "The only iPhone app that puts you directly in touch with God," or so goes the marketing tagline from its creators' Web site.

And there's the rub. Claiming that this app, and this one alone, will put you "directly in touch with God" is not only inaccurate, but actually offensive.

Yom Kippur is ultimately a joyous day, promising forgiveness, atonement and reconciliation for all who seek it. But in classically Jewish fashion, the attainment of such things hinges on genuinely confronting and addressing our deepest fears, angers and hurts. Yom Kippur, as one of my nephews remarked when I explained this to him, is not for "wusses."

That is true, I responded, but it does work. And by the end of the day, it builds to a crescendo of personal empowerment that really explains the profound joy felt at break-fasts throughout the world, a joy far deeper than that which can be explained by a glass of orange juice or a bagel, no matter how much one hates fasting.

On Yom Kippur we invoke a God who is prepared to look back on the very worst of what we have done and say, "I forgive you." That willingness creates the safety to address the messes in our lives, and even to be a little God-like ourselves, finding new reserves of understanding and forgiveness for those who have wronged us over the past year or longer.

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That's the invitation being offered by many individual synagogues and even by the Jewish Television Network, a pioneer in using many forms of communications technology to meet the needs of Jews, and anyone else interested in Jewish thought and practice. While some in the Jewish community object to the very notion of people tuning in online for their Yom Kippur experience, there is much about this that deserves to be celebrated. As I told the Steve Lipman of the New York Jewish Week, "The more opportunities there are for people to connect, the better it always is."

It's not that I don't appreciate the halakhic problems from a traditional perspective, because I do. And for those and many other reasons, attending a cyber-shul is not for me. But unless one insists that to be authentically and meaningfully Jewish, something must meet the measure of contemporary orthodoxy, and I certainly don't, that is not an issue. Neither is the fact that participating in a service online really is very different from being there in person.

While I wish that more people broadcasting their services better appreciated how new technology and new means of communication create genuinely new understandings of community and connection, the changes they are bringing are no more radical than the writing down of the oral torah, Maimonides popularization of a simplified law code over the more complex Talmud, or the institution of regular prayer that could be performed anywhere as a substitute for animal sacrifices offered exclusively in the Jerusalem Temple.

Adultery hurts pretty much everybody associated with it, even if they don't know it at the time. That's what two of its defenders fail to appreciate on ABC News' first show in a Nightline series about the Ten Commandments. But what hurts is not the fact that someone had sex outside the context of marriage, or made God angry by doing so, or will undermine "decent society" because they did. What hurts is the betrayal of trust, the undermining of a presumed covenant between two loving partners, and the overturning of mutually agreed upon expectations which those partners have of each other.

Because the real issue with adultery is people's hearts and minds, not whose genitals touched whose, different cultures, including ones which base themselves on the Bible, have understood what counts as adultery in different ways. That is an awareness seemingly lost on the shows two guests who speak out against adultery.

The Ten Commandments may be eternal, but no interpretation of them is. And as soon as most people learn what counted as adultery in the time of the Bible, they understand how true that is.