Christmas: A Jewish Perspective

It’s Christmastime, a celebration of the birth of Jesus.  Amidst all the hoopla, we rarely hear anything about the Jewishness of Jesus.  I know some people know this, but I think it’s worth repeating.  Jesus was not a Christian.  Jesus was and is Jewish.  His mother Mary was Jewish.  Joseph, his father was Jewish.  The Gospel writers were Jewish.  Jesus’ disciples were Jewish.  The Apostle Paul was Jewish.  Most of Jesus’ early followers were Jewish.  Jesus attended and taught in the synagogue.  His scriptures were the Jewish scriptures.  He died with a Jewish question on his lips taken from Psalm 22.

There is an old joke that Christianity is a Jewish sect which has had good numerical growth.  I think Jesus was out to make non-Jews as Jewish as possible.  There is an ongoing continuity and discontinuity between Jewish and Christian believers.  The closer your relation to someone the deeper the disagreements can be.   The response to Jesus, the Christian “yes” and the Jewish “no”, are both holy, honest and valid. 

 I wish all Christians a holy season to contemplate the mysterious and vital relationship between Christians and Jews.  Let’s not forget how close and how far we are from and to each other.

Prophets, Rabbis and Pastors

After many years of sitting through first synagogue then Church and back to synagogue services, here are a few observations about Prophets, Rabbis and Pastors.

Rabbis and Pastors are translators of their respective traditions. Their job is to communicate and facilitate the truth of their traditions.   They have not been trained to teach people to think but rather to  believe.  Most are employed or called by congregations to perform certain functions.  They are administrators of an organization whose members voluntarily attend worship.  They usually avail themselves of various tax breaks, have 401 K’s, get regular salaried checks and vacations and are part of a larger denominational religious structure.  Many live comfortable middle-class lives.  Many have learned how to be politically tactful and manage their congregants with diplomacy.  Many are very nice and friendly.  If you are in the hospital, as part of their routines, they will come visit and pray over you.  Some Rabbis and Pastors are much too certain about what they proclaim.  Many have learned how to give their respective sermons without aggravating their followers too much.  Finally, most Pastors, Priests and Rabbis are not interested in taking risks for the sake of their messages.  

A prophet, on the other hand, is someone who speaks the truth.  You might reasonably assume that is also what Pastors and Rabbis do.  But there is a difference between being a prophet and being a religious functionary.

The only prophets we know are the Biblical prophets.  In their day, Prophets were not part of the religious establishment.  They usually had other vocations and were called by God to leave their day jobs and go to a certain place to deliver a message.  Their message was intended to get people to repent, to be changed radically at the core.  Prophets charged people to care for the poor, widows and orphans.  Prophets were not tactful.  They were not nice.  They got in people’s faces in order to wake them up.  They were critical of any religion that did not result in concern and action for justice.  Prophets used shocking sexual language to awaken people from their spiritual slumber.  Most prophets did not want to be prophets and protested to God over what they were compelled to proclaim.  Finally, most prophets were killed for what they were saying.

Prophets can be criticized for not being tactful enough while Rabbis and Pastors can be criticized for being full of tact.  The fact is they are each performing a different function.

Many years ago, a fine Lutheran pastor spoke these wise words to me, “Murray, my friend, the people in the pews, you are their servant, but they are not your master.”  A few Pastors and Rabbis know this to be true.  These special clergy have integrity and have gained the trust of their worshippers.  That trust allows them to periodically step up and speak truthfully and prophetically without fear of retribution. 

It doesn’t make them prophets, but it means they have the courage to speak against too much religious certainty and arrogance.  And they also find themselves proclaiming how faith and concern for justice are inextricable.  They are not frightened of their members.

When you meet such a Pastor or Rabbi, you are witnessing the potential integrity and strength of religious faith. And that’s something!

Surviving Order and Chaos

Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty: “It tells us that there is a fuzziness in nature, a fundamental limit to what we can know about the behavior of quantum particles and, therefore, the smallest scales of nature.”  It seems craziness and uncertainty are built into the nature of nature and the nature of human nature.

We ought not be surprised to read this since we experience it in our lives all the time.  People are well; people get sick.  We get into our cars uncertain whether we will have an accident; we may feel well this morning but we wonder how long that will last; we make decisions every day but are not sure they are right; the stock market goes up and it goes down without any certainty as to what it will do tomorrow; Mr. Trump remains Mr. Trump, unpredictable, alarming, obnoxious, and we are uncertain what he will do next, we have faith in God or we do not and we wonder if we could be wrong.  Of what can we be certain?  Is anyone or anything in control? “Is anyone driving the bus?”

Let’s just admit:  Life is a convoluted uncertain mixture of order and chaos.  And for good or for bad, we are compelled to live in this vortex.  Our religious faith does not exempt us from walking through the good and the bad.  Our faith teaches us how to persevere and survive both the order and the chaos of life.  Stay sane out there.

What You Might not Know about Hanukkah

You probably know this week many Jews are lighting candles for 8 nights and exchanging gifts.

 You might not know, Hanukkah is about a Jewish civil war over assimilation versus loyalty to Jewish monotheism.  In 165 B.C.E. the land we know today as Israel was controlled by the Greek forces of Alexander the Great.  Being Greek, with its emphasis on worshipping nature and the body was in vogue.  Worshipping one God was superstitious nonsense.  Many Jews at the time had adapted and assimilated into Greek culture.  They jettisoned their Jewish commitments.  They allowed the holy temple to be abused and despoiled. 

There were other Jews who were loyal to their tradition who decided to attack their fellow Jews and the Greeks to reclaim the temple, more importantly, to reassert monotheism. 

This civil war and the success of Judah Maccabee and his compatriots set the tone for the survival of monotheism and the eventual creation of Christianity and Islam, all of whom stubbornly continue to proclaim the one God.

The word Hanukkah means rededication.  The temple in Jerusalem was rededicated to the one God Jews believed was at work in this world.  The oil to light the menorah, supposed to last one day, lasted 8 days.

 As a skeptical religious romantic, I light the candles this week to remember and proclaim again our hope against hope in the one God.

Ezer K'negdo

In the book of Genesis God declares, “It is not good for Man to be alone.  (The word “Man” refers to any human being.)   “I will create an ezer k’negdo for the Man.”

What is an ezer k’negdo?  The Hebrew word ezer means helper and the word k’negdo means someone opposite who can stand against you.  The Rabbis teach us this person will be a stranger, a deep intimate, a friendly antagonist, a lover who challenges you.  This is someone who gets in your face, to kiss you, to argue with you, to scream at you, to support you, to wrestle with you, to tell you when you are wrong and to forgive you again and again.

An ezer k’negdo can be a man or a woman. An ezer k’negdo tells you the truth whether you want to hear it or not.  And has your back whether you are right or wrong.  This person can be sweet, loving and caring.  She or he can be forgetful, aggravating, exasperating and annoying.  Sometimes they will have room in their heads to listen and care, sometimes not.  But the ezer k’negdo will not stop loving you.   The ezer k’negdo knows you the way others do not and cannot.  The ezer k’negdo gets you.

There’s a great quote from the film, Shall We Dance:

We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet, what does any one life really mean?  But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything.  The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day.  You’re saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.  Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.”

I am lucky to have married my ezer k’negdo and I have tried to be precisely that for her.  Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, and sometimes I say, “I’m sorry.”

 I wish for you an ezer k’negdo who will keep you sane and honest.  When you have a day when no one seems to get you and you can’t even get yourself, she will be there to catch you before you fall.  And you will make room in your head and heart to listen to her.  You will listen to her talk about her happy good days.  And you will wipe away her tears on her sad or bad days, as you listen to her talk about her fears.

The Biblical Text is right:  It is not good for Man to be alone.”

The Gods We Worship

The gods we worship determine how we will act.  Ask yourself what is most important in your heart right now and there you will find your god.  What is most important to you is what you worship, what controls the decisions you make in life and how you do or do not get along with others. 

Think about it.  Why do we bother to get out of bed in the morning?  There must be a reason. What gives meaning to our lives gives us purpose.  If getting people to like you is your god, that is your purpose.  If living and surviving is your God, you do what you can to prolong your life.  If being safe is your god, then safety will determine how and where you live.

The same is true if you worship money or sex or power, or longevity.  The gods we decide to worship determine how we will live our lives.  There are many gods out there.  How then shall we live?

In Jewish tradition we have a prayer called the Shema.  In this prayer we are told: “Listen Israel:  My God our God, God is one.  And you shall love my Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your everything.” 

Jews hold that God is a God of integrity, character, love and one who yearns for justice.  We do what we can to emulate this God.  And when this God fails to act on behalf of justice, we raise our questions as a sign of our continued trust that God will yet be God.  As God questions us, we question God. 

Christians are taught by Jesus to deny themselves, care for the neighbor and strive for justice. They have been taught to be as gracious with the neighbor as God has been with them.  

Many of us have more than one god.  How should we live with all these gods?

 “In deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with one another.” (Neil MacGregor)

Think that You May Be Wrong

Members of the monotheistic religions believe in one God.  This is true for Jews, Christians and Muslims.  So, why do some believers have problems respecting the faith of other believers?  Why will some Christians not pray with other Christians or Muslims or Jews?  Why will some Jews not attend the synagogue of other Jews?  Why are their such acrimonious divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims? 

Some of it has to do with truth and human nature.  Monotheistic believers claim they have received a revelation from God which is the truth.  They have read the Bible or studied the Confessions or the Talmud of their Church or community, and they are sure they are right. This kind of surety is seductive.  It means you and your group are the only ones with the truth.

When these truths differ even in the slightest details with what other believers interpret, some people take offense and see it as their duty to defend the purity of their truth.  And religions have categories like believer and unbeliever, insider and outsider, faithful and faithless, good and evil.  These categories can be constructive and inclusive, but they can also be destructive and exclusive.

Truth is not something we, or our group possesses.  Truth is something we humans pursue.  Truth is tentative and a glimpse at best.  We do not easily get there because our five senses are too limited.  When we are honest, we confess we do not know or understand the mysteries of the universe.

Our best strategy for engagement with those of other religious beliefs is respect and humility. 

 Whether you be religious or non-religious, believe what you believe is the truth.  Argue and defend what you believe.   But think that you could be wrong. 

I remember the 1960's

I've been listening to a lot of music from the 1960’s and remembering those days.

I remember growing up in the Bronx in the 1960’s.  My teenage years were spent on a street called Gates Place near Moshulu Parkway in New York City.  My parents, my brother and I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment. 

 I think back to those days and remember my friends.  We called ourselves “The Crowd” (Bernie, Lenny, Jeannie, Joyce, Bobby, Sheila, Barbara, Pookie, Glenn, Eppy, Herbie, Sandy, Marlene, Jeff and of course Pecker).  I remember my first kiss.  I remember the ball games we played around the block (three box, off the crack, punch ball, stick ball and softball).  I remember listening to Cousin Brucie on “77 WABC” on the transistor radios we carried around with us as we hung out on the stoop at Garafalo’s (The Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Little Eva). 

 I remember my Bar-Mitzvah at Twersky’s synagogue. I remember attending Nathan Strauss Jewish Center on Saturday mornings.  I remember the fine breads and rolls at Scheff’s bakery, the kosher deli’s on Jerome avenue (Epstein’s and Schweller’s with their great hot dogs and hot knishes). I remember the fresh hot bialys you could buy at a shop whose name I’ve forgotten; I remember Thompkins candy store on Gun Hill Road where I drank egg creams with pretzels, the great trip to the new world of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the many train voyages on the D train to 161^st street to Yankee Stadium with either my brother or Bobby Goldberg to see Mickey Mantle or Roger Maris stand at the plate and hit one out.  Those days seem so simple and innocent.  It was a great time and place to be a kid!

I remember those innocent days with romantic nostalgia.  But it was not always so nice.  There was the Cuban missile crisis which convinced us the end of the world was at hand, the shock of President Kennedy’s assassination (the moment we all grew up), the war in Vietnam, the many protest marches, the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Kent State killings, the election of Richard Nixon.

I remember my Dad, a Holocaust survivor, waking up and screaming in the middle of the night. I remember my parents arguing about money.  I remember the aging bed my brother and I slept in collapsing again and again followed by the terrible explosion of anger, panic, rage, blame and deep fear.  I remember the three times I ran away from the craziness of that apartment in the Bronx.  And I remember finding high school boring, depressing and loving snow days and vacations.

 I remember walking down the block, leaving home at 18 to join the Air Force and arriving in San Antonio scared, too young and wondering what I had gotten myself into. 

I remember the 1960’s as fun, frightening, complicated and full of craziness.  Maybe when we listen to our music from back then we will remember what we want to remember and forget what we can’t stand to remember.   As Simon and Garfunkel sang, “Time it was and what a time it was . . . A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago it must be, I have a photograph, preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”

A Few Words about Pittsburgh

What happened in Pittsburgh was very sad but sadly unsurprising.  There has been no generation in the last two thousand years when someone in the world was not trying to kill Jews.  It keeps on keeping on.  This longest hatred gets longer, and I am not convinced we can stop it.

But we can do something.  We can raise our voices again and again and again and speak out against it. Christian pastors and priests can stand up in their pulpits and point out those texts in the New Testament, especially John 8, Matthew 27 and the parts of the Holy Week passion story which condemn “the Jews” for their participation in Jesus’ death. These stories should not be taken out of context as a license to hate all Jews everywhere and anywhere. 

Most of the people sitting in Christian pews are not a threat to Jews but they need to hear about these toxic texts in the Christian scriptures. Some clergy have been speaking out. Others need to begin.  The rest of us need to be vigilant, to speak up when someone takes a shot against all Jews, to refuse to be quiet when hatred of Jews is being declared.

We will never be able to get rid of extremists and haters.  But we can resist and isolate their hatred.

Thank you to all those who contacted me or stopped me in the hallway to say they were sorry this happened.  It meant more than you know.

Pittsburgh

What follows is a message written by my wife, Jill in memory of those killed in Pittsburgh. I fully concur.

When Christians pray – separately or together - they pray, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” Or they sing, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! 

Jewish prayer is very different, because in Jewish prayer, there is no ‘I’ or ‘me.’ Additionally, according to Jewish tradition, prayer is an act most fittingly performed in the presence of a community. In fact, certain key prayers may only be recited in the presence of a minyan – a quorum of ten adult Jews. If the quorum isn’t present, meaning if the community isn’t present, the prayers may not be said. 

When my community gathers to confess our sins on Yom Kippur, we are not just confessing our individual sins. We are confessing sins for the entire community of Jews across the entire world. “Adonai, we come to you aware of our failings. We are careless, false, heartless, insolent and joyless.  May it be your will, God of all generations, to pardon all our sins and to forgive all our wrongdoings.” And when we ask for blessings, we ask for the worldwide community of Jews as well. “Grant us life, well-being, lovingkindness and peace. Bless us, Adonai our God, with all that is good.”  

It is among the sacred duties of every Jew to show up and be counted so our prayers can be said -- so they can be said on behalf of all Jews, everywhere. Remember, there is no ‘I’ or ‘we’ in Jewish prayer. Without exception, Jewish prayer is about the greater whole – the corporate body of Jews throughout the world. 

So ~ thank you to all of you who have reached out to comfort us and our community in the last few days.  In doing so, you have comforted not only us, but Jews everywhere, all over the world.  

Who's Testing Whose Reliability

In the Genesis account of the story, Abraham is tested by God.  He is told to take his son, his only son, the one he loves, Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham does not discuss what to do with anyone.  He does not debate whether the voice he is hearing is real or unreal.  He obeys, takes his son along with a few young men, necessary supplies and heads for a place to slaughter his boy.  He seems calm and without concern.

In Jewish tradition, this event is called the Akeda, the binding of Isaac.  This test of Abraham’s faith and loyalty is a story with deep and controversial meaning for Jews and Christians.  

Maybe the story has less to do with Abraham’s faith than God’s reliability.  God has promised Abraham descendants as plentiful as the stars in the sky, as the dust on the earth, and Abraham believed and trusted God.  He trusted God so much he decided to test God.  So, he remained calm, took his son to Mount Moriah, prepared the fire and bound his son, and bet all he had on God’s reliability. 

God was testing Abraham, but Abraham was also testing God.  Who would blink first? Abraham won the wager.  God was reliable.  Abraham was reliable.

Whether Abe testing God is true or not, what can we say today about God’s reliability?   In our times and in our lives, many have experienced the silence of God.  But, are we right?  It depends how you want to talk about God working in our world.

In Jewish tradition we are taught, every time one of us cares for the neighbor, one of us is kind rather than angry, one of us stands up for justice, one of us changes his or her life for the better, there, right there is the presence and influence of God.  God has faith in our capacity to act.  And what if God’s reliability is tied to our reliability?  What if God needs us to act for God to be reliable?  I’m not sure but it’s something to think about.

A Few Thoughts on Religion

1.        Religion is not about getting but about giving.  Ask not what you can get from religion, ask what you can give to care for the neighbor and make the world a bit more just.  

2.       If you want to know what someone believes, do not listen to the mouth, follow the feet.

3.       Keep trying to change what is wrong even when you fail, or what is wrong will ultimately change you. That means vote, vote, vote!

4.       Faith is trusting without knowing for sure.  Theology is talking about God without knowing what you’re talking about.  A true theologian is haunted by the silence of God and knows that she or he does not know.

5.       Whether we like it or not, there are different religions and different ways to be religious.  Some ways of being religious are helpful and wise, while others are not.  The key lies in the communal argument not the conclusion.

6.       In religion, the question is more important than the answer to the question.

7.       Arguing about which religion is the best, the truest, the right one, is like arguing about which star is brightest in the dark sky.  They each have their moments, some constructive, some destructive, some explosive, some implosive.

8.       Religion is a mysterious romantic adventure.  It gives people hope, keeps them sane, trains them to act well.  But it can make other people crazy, mad or insane.  Pascal was right, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

9.       Facing the limits of religious truth takes wisdom and courage.  The serious religious person searches for truth and is skeptical about any unsupported assertions. 

10.   Do not be too religious.  Religions offer us but a glimpse into the mystery.  At the same time, do not dismiss the power and force of religious truth.  Religions were invented by human beings; what God has to do with each religion, only God knows.

Problems with Jesus

Jews, Christians and Muslims who think about their religious traditions will have problems with Jesus.  The problems are not talked about much in public, but they are substantial.

For Jews, Jesus lacks the credentials to be the Messiah or Christ.  Jesus did not rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.  He did not bring peace throughout the world.  He did not cause all Jews to live in peace in the land of Israel and he did not cause non-Jews to flock to Israel to study Torah.  Historically, many Jews have been persecuted and killed in the name of Jesus.  And the Christian Gospels have many texts that are anti-Jewish.  Jesus may have been a prophet.   He may have been a charismatic divine instrument trying to make gentiles as Jewish as possible.  But for most Jews, as the messiah, Jesus is problematic.

For Muslims, Jesus was born of a virgin and is the Christ, but he is also not divine.  According to the Quran, Jesus did not die on the cross but was saved at the last minute and someone else died in his place.  Jesus as part of the Trinity is a problem because it means Christians are worshipping a man and engaged in idolatry. There is tremendous respect for Jesus within Islam, but for Muslims, the Christian Jesus remains problematic.

For Christians, the problem with Jesus is subtle and complicated.  The problem is Jesus was an incomplete and insufficient Messiah.  Christians are assured by their scriptures and traditions that God sent Jesus into the world to die for their sins and to be raised for their justification and eternal life.  But, every Advent, Christians face the fact that Jesus came but has not come back to complete his work.  Some have called this waiting for Jesus’ return, “the delay.”  It has been over two thousand years and this delay is a problem.

Yes, there are problems with Jesus.  But, despite all these issues, we have before us three communities, with something in common.  They are waiting for God to act.  There is an old Jewish prayer called Ani Maamin (I believe).  “I believe in the coming of the messiah and though he tarry I shall wait, I shall wait, I shall wait.”  For all the unresolved problems with Messiahs, and there are many, the secret still resides in the waiting. And maybe that is enough for now?

Interpreting the Bible and Staying Sane

There is a common phrase among some religious people: “the Bible says.”  But our scriptures without exception cannot speak unless they are interpreted.  When someone says, “the Bible says”, what they are saying is, “This is what I hear or think the Bible is saying.”  And it seems so clear to that person that they shorten the sentence to “the Bible says.”

This is important because I have had people say to me, “Dr. Haar, you interpret the Bible, I read it.”

As soon as you have a text, and someone reads that text, you have interpretation.  Interpretation asks, “What does what I just read mean?  And as soon as you’ve decided what the text means, you have interpreted the text.

I suppose what bothers some people is they want to believe the Bible comes directly from, God, word for word. They want to believe they have in their hands the literal word of God and they can therefore interpret that word literally.  They may also think the word, interpretation, weakens the power and authority of that word. 

But, our Bibles were made to be interpreted.

At best, our Bibles were written by human beings and inspired by God.  That means we are not only compelled to interpret the text; we can argue and disagree with the text.  The Bible is not God and we ought not worship it.  Whenever the Bible points us to faith in God and teaches us to be people of character, we respect it.  Whenever it does not, we may dispute with the text.

Whenever we wrestle with and study the scriptures; whenever we interpret the text we can be assured we are taking the Bible seriously and staying sane.

Order and Chaos

Life is a mixture of order and chaos.  We humans desire and seek order but sometimes create chaos.  Order is when everything makes sense and we feel in control of what is going on.  Chaos may best be defined as the feeling of being out of control. 

In our scriptures God is pictured as constantly wrestling with chaos, the chaos of nature and the chaos of human nature.  Sometimes God prevails and sometimes God fails to prevail.  Example:  Cain kills Abel and God does not stop it.  The blood of Abel is pictured as crying to God and God laments the killing but loses to the chaos within Cain.  Not everything described in the Bible is the will of God!

When we say God is in control of everything that happens we make God responsible for everything that happens. I suppose it matters what you mean by the word “control.” But, if everything happens according to God’s plan, it makes God the author of good and evil.  It turns God into an arbitrary monster who hurts people every day in all sorts of ways.

I know it can be comforting for some to think everything happens to us as part of some grand divine plan but just think about it.  If that’s true, it means the Holocaust was part of God’s plan.  Destructive diseases of every ilk are part of the plan. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and every accident and every suicide, is part of the plan.

Some will argue God has a deeper, longer, grander hidden plan which humans cannot understand.  That is possible, but if that plan includes God committing evil, why would anyone want to worship a God who does such terrible things as part of some mysterious plan?

The life we experience every day tells us order and chaos are real.  Accidents happen.  Diseases are part of life.  Hurricanes and earthquakes are part of nature.  God appears to be wrestling with the chaos of the earth, with the freedom and inconsistency of its human creatures, with the fact we all live on a small blue planet with distinct laws of nature in an obscure part of the universe.

The contest between order and chaos is messy and uncertain but it sure beats the idea of “the plan.”

Being Mortal is Not Easy

Mortality is not for the weak and cowardly, and it doesn’t work very well for the strong and courageous either. Let’s face it:  our brains do not like the idea we have to grow old and die no matter how incrementally and gradual the process.   We are not happy about it. We do what we can to deny the fact and try not think about it.  Read, The Denial of Death by Ernst Becker.

Over the millennia, the human brain has devised all sorts of mechanisms to deal with and thereby try to control death.  As I get older, I find myself worrying, anticipating, being fatalistic, going to the doctor in the hope of catching some potentially catastrophic ailment before it develops, going through multiple colonoscopies, telling myself not to worry since it is out of my control. 

But I’m also a theologian and I think about dying theologically.  There are many theological rationales:  It’s all in God’s hands.  It’s part of some inscrutable mysterious hidden plan.  Or it’s not part of any plan.  It’s a matter of chance but God will walk through it with you.  Heaven means being with God forever.  There is no heaven.  All the rationales can be quite subtle and sophisticated.  Or I sometimes think, there is no God and when you die, you will just disappear the same way you do when they put you under for surgery.  The tumble of the pinball electric thoughts in my brain do not stop.

Then, I get tired of obsessing about the subject.  Yes, I’m getting older but I’m just not going to think about it.  I’ll read a book, teach my classes, watch another show, talk about politics, have a cookie or two cookies, go out and eat at a nice restaurant with my wife, eat more bagels, watch more baseball, have a beer, enjoy life.

Finally, there are the gratitude people, the Stoics and the Buddhists who try to assuage their fear by declaring they are grateful “for a life well lived” and welcome their fate and the setting sun.  And just when I say to myself, “that’s the way to go”, I hear the raspy voice of Dylan Thomas urging his father, “Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage Rage against the dying of the light.”

Is it worth it?  Is mortality worth the worry and the anxiety of getting old and walking into that night? 

Yes, it is!  For all the craziness of life and there is more than enough, we want more.  Debilitating diseases, monster hurricanes, destructive tornadoes, massive earthquakes, cancers large and small, crazy political leaders, Holocausts and more.  Nothing diminishes our desire to see the morning sun one more time. 

Being mortal is not easy but we were created to love life, so I am glad to be sitting here typing another blog and hoping you will take time in your brain to read it.  Being mortal is not easy but the old joke about the two Jewish grandmas eating at an old restaurant is apt.  One says to the other, “The food here is terrible.”  The other replies, “Yes, and they don’t give seconds.” 

In the Middle

Jews are presently living in the middle between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  These are the holiest days of the year for Jews, between the New Year (Rosh Hashana, 5779) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur).  It is a ten-day period of introspection.  Jews are supposed to reflect on how they have acted during the past year and to whom they must go and seek forgiveness, before they can ask forgiveness from God on Yom Kippur. 

In Jewish tradition you cannot ask forgiveness until you have examined in what ways you have hurt someone during the previous year.   In this tradition lies the unique Jewish belief there are some things God cannot and will not forgive.  The Rabbis teach when you hurt someone you are not hurting God.  You are hurting a specific someone.  And you must approach that someone and ask for forgiveness.

So, why can’t God forgive you?  Because you did not sin against God.  You sinned against another person.  That’s a whole other relationship.  You tell me about someone who robbed you and how violated you feel.  I listen and say to you, “I forgive the robber who did this to you.”  But that’s crazy.  It’s not my place to forgive something that did not happen to me.  Just so with God.

Between the New Year and the Day of Atonement, the middle part, the ten days of reflection are the most important.  Figure out who you wounded this past year.  Text, call or do what you can to seek reconciliation.  When Jews do this, they will have celebrated the New Year and are ready to meet God on Yom Kippur.

Btw, non-Jews are welcome to do the same.

Justice and the State of Israel?

There may be no more controversial and disputed piece of real estate in the world than the State of Israel.  Seventy years after its establishment, Israel remains a nation surrounded by terrorist groups and enemies who believe that Israelis have settled the land illegally and immorally. To the north are Hezbollah, to the south Hamas, to the north and west, the Syrian civil war and the Palestinian Authority.  And this is not to mention the larger Arab community, especially Iran, which for the most part is hostile to Israel.

Israel is a relatively small nation, about 50 miles east to west and 150 miles north to south. About eight and a half million people live there.  Seven million are Jews and about one and a half million are Palestinians. Israel was created by people who believed in a movement called Zionism.  To many Jews the word Zion means home and Zionism is the movement to return Jews to their ancestral home.  Many Palestinians say, the Jewish return to the Jewish ancestral home has caused Palestinians to be removed from their homes. 

The result is a “war of narratives.”  “Great wars in history eventually become great wars about history” wrote Michael Oren.  True indeed!

The Israeli Palestinian argument has historical, religious, geographical, economic and emotional components.  There are extremists on both sides and many are armed.  At the same time, a pervasive antisemitism exists in the Middle East and in parts of Europe.  Some Israelis believe in a “greater Israel” while some Palestinians will accept nothing less than “return” of all their land and an end to the State of Israel. 

It is a messy situation.

Where then is all this going?

My sense is there can be no simple justice that will satisfy both sides.  And by the way there are many sides within each side. The final settlement, when it is reached, will have to be made up of compromise and proximate justice supported by a courageous political leadership willing to negotiate and enforce a peace agreement.

When this will happen is difficult to say and it is hard to be optimistic these days.   But we have seen the Berlin wall come down.  We have seen apartheid overthrown in South Africa.  We have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is relative peace in Ireland.   So, let us hope against hope.

A Crisis of Religious Authority

We are alive in a time when religious authorities, including God, are suspect. 

The first six letters of the word authority spell author.  Who is the author of our religious traditions and texts?  True believers are convinced.  They tell us the author is God.  They say, everything in our scriptural texts ultimately comes from God.  That sounds seductively comforting.  There are no more questions except how to interpret “God’s word.” 

After the Enlightenment, the historical critical method of reading scripture, after Spinoza, Darwin, Freud, Einstein and the convincing explanations of scientists, it has become impossible for many of us to just assert scripture and religion comes directly from God.  If our scriptures originate with God, they appear terribly contradictory, imperfect and outdated.  It also seems that our notions of how God operates in the world, regarding undeserved suffering and evil, and whether there is a God have increasingly come into question.  The old belief that God’s ways are not our ways and we should just accept that fact, seems to no longer be very convincing.  This deterioration of authority has been going on for over 350 years. 

So, how do we, religious people with open eyes, talk about the authority of our scriptures, our religious traditions, our religious leaders and God, without closing our eyes and pretending there are no questions or doubts? 

First, we must be honest.  While, religious authority has diminished over the last three hundred years in some circles, other people continue to assert their faith in the mystery of God and the scriptures.  The matter of religious authority is not settled but in dispute.

Second, here is a way you can check your own views on the authority of your tradition.

 Look at the way you live your life.   What parts of your religious tradition are binding on you?  What parts are not binding?  What parts do you ignore or not think about?   What parts are the most important and cannot be compromised?  What parts do you think can be questioned and/or changed? Who told you, you had the right to make such determinations on your own?

Whether you or I like it or not, authority is not what it once was.  Being religious or not being religious has become an authorized personal individual choice.  Everybody has a right to decide for him or herself what is true and what is not true.

Some would say we are living within a crisis of religious authority.  Others would applaud the demise of religious authority.  Some respect religious authority while others feel suffocated by that same authority.

While we can be envious of religious innocence and certainty, we ought not be naïve about our situation.  Let’s face it. 

The real problem is this:  Many of us want to be both modern and religious.  But we are not sure how to do it.

Question:  Has our rebellion against religious authority made us behave better, care more, act with courage, honor and civility toward each other?

P.S.  The Blog is on leave until September 1. Talk to you then.  M.H.

How to be a Mensch

I have often written and spoken and harped about the importance of being a “mensch.” 

It is at the center, for me, of what it means to be a Jew and a human being.

The word “mensch” comes from the Yiddish appropriation of a German word, meaning man or person.  When you say someone is a mensch, you’re saying that person has character, courage, kindness and wisdom.  Another way is to ask yourself, if you were in trouble and needed help, on whose door would you knock and be sure they would let you in?  That person would be a mensch because you could trust he or she would be there for you.

Being a mensch is also not about agonizing whether to act or not.  “Those who agonize do not act.  And those who act do not agonize.”

You become a mensch by acting like a mensch.  It happens through being a person of character, action by action.  You act this way not to get God to love you or because you are perfect.  You act like a mensch to be a human being.  It becomes part of your life.  It becomes a matter of habit.  If you want to be a kind person, do kind acts.  If you wish you could care more, care more.

Theology, religious rituals and acts, hymns, meditation, creeds, confessions, and prayers have their place.  But, the heart of real faith is centered not on what you believe, but on what you do. 

By the way, being a mensch is true for Jews and Christians. Think of the story of the Samaritan who risks helping the person on the side of the road.  And, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is depicted as asking his followers, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you to do?” (Luke 6:46)

You become a mensch by being a mensch.  This is at the heart and soul of being a religious person. All the rest is commentary.

All Creatures Great and Small

We humans are creatures great and small.  We are here for a short while, and then, reluctantly, we disappear.  Who are we?  We can be amazingly courageous and caring.  We can sacrifice our own lives for the sake of others.  We can be nice.  We can be mean. We can be selfish and sacrifice someone else’s life so that we may survive.  We have the capacity to act well and not so well.  We love, and we hate.  We care about others but when stressed can become self-centered and self-obsessed

What are we?  We are human creatures or animals.  We are ambiguous and inconsistent by nature.

We are limited, vulnerable, fragile, arrogantly independent and terribly dependent at the same time.  We can be wounded by other creatures.  We are a species that kills its own kind in large numbers through wars and genocides.  We can be courageous and cowardly.  And we remember with plays, books, movies and narratives what we have done, lament the awful terror and madness, and then do it all over again.

We are human animals.  We have been acting like this for a long time.

The Biblical texts compare us to sheep.  We are cute, furry, and independent but not too smart.  We are easily led astray by shiny objects and goals set by unrelenting appetites and desires.  When young or even older, we can be irrational, get lost often and need to be found and to find ourselves.  True for some more than others.  We can be religious and not religious.

We are great and small.  We are here, and we disappear. 

When all is said and done, Joseph Epstein has it right: “All men and women are born, live, suffer and die. We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die, or the times and conditions of our death.  But within all this choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live, courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift.  We decide what is important and what is trivial.  What makes us significant is what we do or refuse to do.  We decide and we choose and as we decide and choose, we define our lives.”

Do What You Can Do

Many of us are fixers.  That’s why we went into the helping professions.  We spend our lives ruminating and worrying about all sorts of situations and people we are unable to change.  We want to fix everyone and everything that is crazy, but we cannot.  We have limits and can only do what we can do.

There is a story In the Gospel of Mark about a woman who, just before Jesus is to be killed, brings perfume to adorn his body.  Jesus’ disciples are critical of her, declaring the money she has wasted on the perfume could have been better spent and given to the poor.  But Jesus is critical of his followers and tells them, “Leave her alone.  She did what she could do.  Wherever the Gospel is preached in all the world it will be spoken in her name.”  Besides the fact that we do not know her name, and one rarely hears the gospel preached in her name, Jesus’ advice rings true.

Leave her alone.  She did what she could do.  She could not stop the killing, but she did what she could do.  This nameless woman can help us all to stay sane.

The problem is when I say “I did what I could do” it can feel like a copout.  We are hard on ourselves.  We are messianic.  We accuse ourselves.  We say things like: "You could have done more.  You are lazy.  You had the wrong tactics or strategy.  You didn't care enough.  You could have tried one more time."  We beat ourselves up because we so badly want to fix who or what is broken.  We may even love the one who is broken but cannot fix that person.  It is sad but true.

So, to you and to me, hear this word of freedom:  It’s time to stop.  Like the woman in Mark’s Gospel, you did what you could do.  You are doing what you can do.  Keep on keeping on but enough is enough. Give yourself a break.  Get a good night’s rest and tomorrow, once again, do what you can do.

Why People Bother To Pray

A student once told me, when she prays at night, she wonders if the only one listening is the ceiling.  I get it.  Many people in the world pray, each in their own way.  But what is the point of praying if we are not sure anyone is listening?  And if there is a God listening, why are the answers to prayer so ambiguous, unclear, and inconsistent? As a child of Holocaust survivors whose relatives were murdered in the Nazi Camps, I am puzzled by prayer and what it accomplishes.

Maybe the purpose of prayer is to inform God of how we are feeling or what we want.  But, I assume any God worth his or her salt would already know what we think, feel, want and need.  So, why pray?

The logical response is catharsis and fear.  Prayer allows us to get our concerns and feelings out of our minds and say them to God or the universe?  Or, maybe it’s a matter of habit.  It’s what we do every morning and evening.  So, we don’t even think about it.  We go through the motions.  Or, perhaps we are going through some mental or physical struggle and we feel alone.  Yes, catharsis has its place in prayer.

Maybe, the reason people pray has to do with truth.  It is that place where we speak the truth about our hopes, our yearnings, our dreams, our gratitude, our confessions, our anger, our questions, our struggle, our tears and sighs to deep for words.  There is a human need to express our deepest feelings and to feel someone is listening.  Truth has its place.

I am a person who prays. I pray because it connects me to the Jewish community.  Across the world, Jews say the Shema (Hear Israel, the Lord is God, The Lord is one) two times a day.  When I pray in Hebrew I feel connected to that praying throng and tribe.  I am Jewish, and that fact gives meaning to my life.

The real reason many people pray is because things in the world are not what they ought to be.  Praying to God is letting the deity know, we see what our world is all about and it is not what it should be.  Prayer is a way of coping with what comes along.  Behind every prayer is the tenacious belief that things can be different.  Things, situations, people can change.  So, we pray and importune God, despite the silence of God.

I am not sure what God has to do with all our praying.  The romantic and religious part of me likes to think God is involved in our world interacting with all our prayers in some inscrutable, ineffable, mysterious way. That’s comforting.

When all is said and done, I think we pray because we feel out of control, it keeps us sane and because many of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, hope against hope someone is listening besides the ceiling.

Everything Does Not Happen for a Reason

Whenever I teach my class dealing with God, suffering and Evil, I hear someone say, “A lot of terrible things happen in the world, but I believe everything happens for a reason and is part of the plan of God.”

At first, such comments sound religious and comforting. Our thoughts are not God’s thoughts.  Everything is determined through the inscrutable will of God.  You don’t have to think any more and it wouldn’t do you any good anyway because what God is doing is all a secret.  It’s a mystery.

 But if you do think about it, you will see these comments are insulting to God and our respective religions.  In our scriptures, there are many events which occur that are not the will of God.  In fact, God is pictured as quite surprised and upset at what people do. For example, Cain murders Abel.  God does not stop the killing and in fact, is shocked by it.  God does not say, “Don’t worry.  It’s all part of my plan.”  Throughout the scriptures, God is periodically depicted as angry and upset at what people do. 

And if it is true, that everything happens for a reason and is part of God’s will, it would mean God is a cosmic monster who commits all sorts of evil for the sake of some hidden master plan.  It would mean the Holocaust was the will of God; it would mean wars, earthquakes, tornadoes, cancers, heart attacks, everyday tragic accidents, suicides, senseless and undeserved suffering would all be happening for “a reason.”  Such actions would not be the work of a loving God.  It would be the work of a sadistic masochistic architect who kills millions of people for the sake of some grandiose mysterious plan.  This God should never be worshipped. 

But I ask myself, why is the notion that everything happens for a reason so popular?  Because it offers up comfort and declares a rhyme or reason that explains all the absurdity and craziness happening every day.  It makes us feel better if we can think all the absurdities of life as part of some cosmic quilt woven together even though we cannot understand the pattern. 

I get it.  The brain needs and creates patterns whether they are there or not.  But we do not have to capitulate to such ideas.  We know that accidents happen.  We know people carry within them generations of genetically determined diseases.  And we should know, if we depict everything happening as part of the Divine will, we will be teaching people to hate God. 

Near as I can tell, God created a universe in which chance and laws of nature control much of what happens.  We trust God is interacting with human decisions but obviously not in such a way as to stop suffering and evil, deserved or undeserved.  The notion, everything happens for a reason, is wishful thinking, a delusion, causing more and more people to become atheists.

Let’s be honest.  The world can be a dangerous place.  God’s activity in the world is problematic, mysterious and difficult to discern.  So, remember again Whitehead’s warning: “Seek simplicity but distrust it.”  If you are going to have faith, let it be an intelligent, honest and humble faith.  In that way we shall honor and not insult our God.

New York and Sioux Falls

It is often said by outsiders, “I love to visit New York but I wouldn’t want to live there.”  

I grew up in New York City.  I lived on Fulton Avenue and Gates Place near Moshulu Parkway in the Bronx.  But when I was eighteen, I left.   My brother has lived in the City all his life and I have visited him there many times since went away.

My wife and I visited New York this past weekend.  I saw and hugged my brother; we stayed in a comfortable hotel, ate at Barbuto, a Jonathan Waxman restaurant, went to a Broadway show, toured MOMA, made our way to Strand, a massive book store, had wonderful thin pizza many times, did some serious downtown walking, endured hectic cab and subway rides. 

 New York City, particularly the Times Square area, is an exciting, noisy, diverse, complicated, crowded, explosive, adventurous, crazy place.  While in New York we saw a five-hour parade on Fifth Avenue celebrating the 70^th anniversary of the State of Israel.   There were thousands of Jews marching in the street singing raucous Hebrew songs in support of the Jewish state.  It is fun to go back and experience the city.

But it is not home for me.  After leaving New York, the Air Force took me to the upper Midwest where I fell in love with the peacefulness and beauty of the place.  For a long time now, I have lived in Sioux Falls, content with its slower and saner pace of life.

As I sit here writing, I think of this small city as relatively quiet, safe, conservative, pretty with trees and an increasing beautiful downtown and of course, the namesake “Falls.”  Our restaurants are not as sophisticated as NYC, but we have wonderful bagels, fine Chinese food, and a growing diversity of eateries. We have several HY-Vees, the Sioux Falls Canaries, the Sioux Falls Storm and Augustana University. 

For all that, I remain fond of New York City, I still have my New York accent, maintain duel loyalty to the Twins and the Yankees, miss the fine Jewish delis, remember my times growing up there, and miss the Jewish presence. 

But, I will tell you something you may find surprising, being Jewish in Sioux Falls means being aware and conscious of being Jewish.  You can’t just blend in.  There are so few of us here that we have learned to care and pay attention to being Jewish. It matters!  So, I like to go back and remember New York, but I am home in Sioux Falls.

Jewish Neurosis

Being Jewish is neurotic.  It involves anxiety, worry and fear.   It is something you want to run away from and something you can’t help but embrace, all at the same time.  During all the years I spent inside the Christian Church, I was constantly reminded by Christians that I was different, I was Jewish.  People wanted to hear my story.  How had a Jew from New York wandered into the Christian Lutheran community of the upper Midwest?  And as I have said on many occasions, ‘the longer I hung around with Lutherans, the more Jewish I became.”

Having run away so far from my community, it took me many years to find my way back.  Now, I am home, and I wear a skullcap every day, I suspect, out of guilt but also to remind myself never to forget who I am.

Given my rather odd journey, I am compelled to reflect on what it means to be Jewish.  First, it means you are part of a tribe or community that has had a tumultuous, terrifying and tenacious history.  It is a community that has been dispersed throughout the world and yet prevails.  Despite the contested establishment of the State of Israel seventy years ago, Jews can be found in any city in the world.  Second, because of our history, we have painfully learned there are people who do not trust “Jews” and we know this distrust and hatred will not stop.  Thirdly, we can be outspoken and passionately care about justice and living as people of character.  It does not mean we are always right and it does not mean all Jews are wonderful human beings.  Like any community we have our share of outliers.  But, as a community, most of us care about living as a “mensch”, a person of character. 

Fourthly, whether we are religious or not, we are encircled by the power of the Torah, that set of divine instructions intended to teach us what it means to live well, and not in chaos.  The Torah, the word means teaching, while interpreted in a variety of ways, is the pedagogical center of Jewish life.  In the land of Israel today, where there are many staunchly religious, and many so called secular or non-religious Jews, every Friday night and Saturday, the Sabbath is celebrated throughout the country.  The Torah is the Jewish tree of life.

And fifth, the Jewish community is a community of questions.  Jews love to argue with each other about who is really Jewish.  They argue with God over his silence during those days.  Because they believe in God they must argue and question his ways.   And, they argue with the world over its silence when Jews are victimized.  I suspect these arguments will be ongoing and signal how important it is to know what it means to be a Jew.  And, as you might expect there are many ways to be Jewish and not everybody gets along.

Sixthly, for some Jews, God is at the center of their existence.  For some, God is a puzzle and for some God does not exist.  Know this: You do not have to believe in God to be Jewish.  And Jews do not think God is Jewish.  God is God.  And you do not have to be Jewish to be in relation with God.

Finally, and this seventh element is rooted in our history and fuels the neurosis:  most Jews are desperate to belong but determined to be different.  Trying to live within this difficult tension in whatever culture we reside, causes some Jews to get lost and wander far from their community. 

I am amazed and yet understand how I allowed myself to wander away from such a distinctive, odd, sometimes crazy, quirky, holy community.  As I look back on all those years, I knew I was Jewish all along and never really forgot.   It is good to be home again despite and because of the neuroses.