On Friendship—Part One

The Problem, and a Biblical Model of Friendship

 I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of FRIENDSHIP in Judaism, and had the pleasure of teaching some texts about this topic at our recent Shavuot celebration. This essay, in two parts, is an abridged form of that program. (If you want to see the Jewish sources I assembled for that evening, you can access the Source Sheet here.)

I.               Introduction to the Topic, a Crisis

There is a crisis of loneliness in the modern world that’s been building for a long time and which was exacerbated by the pandemic. In past year or so, there have been a spate of articles (in the New York Times, Psychology Today, NPR, The Atlantic, and many more) along the lines of, “Why is it so difficult for adults to make new friends?”

There are many reasons for our increasing social isolation, but the burning irony is that all of our online technology somehow makes our distance from one another even worse. True, there is potential in social media and ever-present smartphones to keep people connected. I’m no Luddite: I have many friends and family members who are far away, and thanks to my devices I’m able to have a window into their lives.

But just as often, these tools worsen our ever-increasing estrangement from one another. So many of us are consumed with our own feeds and personalized diets of entertainment that our self-absorption is worse than ever. Sure, every generation of adults thinks the next iteration of technology is a calamity. (Remember when violent cartoons were going to be the destruction of all those ‘70s and ‘80s kids? Where’s Wile E. Coyote when you need him?) Yet it’s remarkable that people today can actually be nostalgic for the act of watching TV together as a family—as opposed to another evening with each family member subsumed in their own private screen.

Suffice to say that many psychologists identify loneliness and isolation as a health risk and a social crisis. The author Robert Putnam diagnosed this American syndrome in his classic study Bowling Alone (2000).

Of course, there is a big difference between “loneliness” and “being alone.” Plenty of people, not just the introverts among us, crave private time to be alone, for self-reflection, creativity, or simply to think. But that is very different from loneliness: the intense yearning for real connection with other people, but the failure to find someone who can reciprocate.

I’m also writing from a personal place. A few years ago, I went through a crisis that was both professional and personal. It was the most traumatic experience of my life, prompting therapy and lots of self-reflection. Of course, my family—especially my extraordinary wife—were my rock during this time. But I also discovered a few lessons about the nature of friends.

My discoveries were twofold. On one hand, I realized that the betrayal of a friend is surely the most painful experience in the world. I was saddened, to say the least, by the failure of some friends—people who said they loved me—to be there when I needed them. Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences, and if so, I empathize with that pain and loss.

But I discovered something else, too: I am blessed to have some truly extraordinary friends who stood up at that time. These friends were present, sympathetic, honest, and compassionate. Some were people who up to that point I didn’t realize were such good friends, and they revealed themselves to be loyal, loving, and partisan on my behalf. What a blessing!

My first prayer for you is that you should be blessed with such friends in your life.

So that’s the background for my inquiries:

·      Did our ancestors in antiquity have “friends”—or is that a modern construct?

·      Are there good examples of friendship in the classic Jewish literature?

·      Jewish sources have so much to say about the most important relationships in life—do they have anything to teach us about how to be a good friend?

II.             Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

 If you believe, as I do, that the Bible is holy because every facet of experience is found there, then surely there are examples of good friends in its pages. But that’s easier said than done. Why not stop reading for a few moments and ask ourselves—“Who are the Biblical examples of true friends?”

Did you come up with any? It’s harder than it seems—especially if you take off of the table family relationships, on the assumption that the place of authority between, say, parents and children distorts what we mean by “friendship.”

Then there’s David and Jonathan—a relationship that is often held up as a true model of friendship. Even the Mishnah (Pirkei Avot 5:16) perpetuates this idea.

But with due respect to the Mishnah, I don’t buy it. David, as presented in the Book of Samuel, is a far too complex and contradictory figure to be a paragon of friendship. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that everyone keeps falling in love with the charismatic and gifted David: his various wives (at least at first); “all Israel and Judah” (2 Sam. 18:16); and, indeed, King Saul’s son Jonathan. Time after time, people profess their love for David, and periodically they save his life because of their devotion to him.

The problem is: David is always the object of another’s love, the Hebrew verb אהב. Never does the text position David as the subject to declare, “David loved ________.” It’s hard to know if David ever loves somebody else.

I propose that such one-sidedness is no model for a real or authentic friendship.

Instead, I can think of one Biblical model that strikes many of the notes of genuine friendship: the three friends of Job.

After Job’s devastating losses—of virtually everything he has—the text reads:

When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him.

When they saw him from a distance, they could not recognize him, and they broke into loud weeping; each one tore his robe and threw dust into the air onto his head.

They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word to him, for they saw how very great was his suffering. (Job 2:11-13)

Read that passage carefully and consider what an extraordinary group of friends Job has!

1.     They live far away. We can tell by their exotic names and the epithets that the Bible gives them. (I know I have many cherished friends who live far away, and it can be a long time—sometimes years—between moments when we see each other.)

2.     But when they hear of Job’s pain, they come. A time of real crisis is not a time to disappear, or to be too busy. They come to be with Job—without being asked.

3.     They tear their clothes—an act of mourning—when they see his distress. His pain is their pain because of the intimacy of their feelings for him.

4.     They sit on the ground with him (another ritual of mourning) and remain silent for days (surely the first example of sitting shiva). Regarding this silence: Yes, sometimes, a situation calls for a carefully chosen kind word. But just as often, what is really necessary is presence. Job’s friends don’t speak—at least, not right away; what is needed is their act of showing up and being present for their friend in his anguish.

Later, Job’s friends will have many things to say. Some of those words are helpful, others, not so much. But I’m struck by so many elements of their behavior, and their desire to bring compassion and healing to their ailing friend.

It’s a model that surely resonates with immediacy in our own age of distance and isolation and ever-creeping solipsism.

Coming in Part Two: The Rabbinic and Kabbalistic traditions offer some remarkable perspectives of genuine friendships. Stay tuned.  

Image: “Friendship Matters,” Psychology Today, June 19, 2015

Is There Such Thing as a Reform Jew?

Many years ago, I attended a conference sponsored by the Reform movement on Jewish ethics at summer camp. It brought together rabbis and educators for a high-level conversation about informal education on “Reform Jewish ethics.”

The primary teacher was Warren Zev Harvey, the Orthodox scholar and Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew University. At the very end of the program (in my memory, he was already wearing his coat and hat and preparing to exit), Professor Harvey posed a challenge to us: “Why do you insist on calling your work Reform Jewish ethics? Why aren’t you self-confident enough about your interpretation of Torah simply to call it Jewish ethics, without the qualifier?”

He was asking us to have the integrity to stand by the authenticity of our own understanding of Judaism, rather than to consider it a parochial eddy outside the mainstream of the Torah tradition. I thought then it was a brilliant question, and it continues to resound with me today.

I’m thinking about that day, since I’ve just returned from attending and presenting at a national conference called “Recharging Reform Judaism,” an important conversation for a religious movement that is in crisis.

My presentation was about the theme of Jewish peoplehood, an idea that has taken a battering in recent years. From the right wing, there are continuous assaults on the legitimacy of non-Orthodox expressions of Judaism. From the left, there are consistent denials of unique responsibility and duties toward one’s people.

Even though I’m attached to fewer and fewer institutions of Reform Judaism these days, and I find myself preferring spaces where those labels do not hold, it’s still the movement in which I largely was raised, and I’m a graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform rabbinic seminary, so I have a partisan interest in this discussion.

The conference had its share of successes and failures, and I’ll try to write about them in the days ahead. But one thought lingers with me both before and after the gathering.

It may seem strange to say, but the conference prompted me to wonder:  Is there even such thing as a Reform Jew?

Or, for that matter, a Conservative or Reconstructionist or Renewal Jew?

I propose that the answer is: No.

It’s not that those words—Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Renewal, Reconstructionist, etc.—don’t mean anything; they most certainly do. It’s simply this:  those adjectives don’t describe Jews. They describe synagogues.

When you became part of the Jewish people – either at birth or upon conversion – no one ever said to you, “Mazel Tov, it’s a Conservative Jew!” or “Congratulations, you are now a Reform Jew!” They did say: Mazel Tov – welcome to am yisrael, the Jewish people wherever we are to be found around the world.  A Jew is simply (?) a Jew, and the principle of klal yisrael emphasizes the connections that a Jew in Massachusetts shares with a Jew in Ukraine, or Tel Aviv, or Argentina, or Uganda. 

And yet, so many obsess over the labels.  What they fail to recognize is that it isn’t the modifier – “Reform” “Conservative” “Orthodox” “Renewal” “neo-Chasidic” or whatever – that is ultimately important. What is important is the “Jewish” part.

Again, the language of different communities is instructive and important. There are qualitative distinctions to be found between different communities, and that’s okay by me. I’m a pluralist by nature.

Personally, I think the demise of the religious movements in America is exaggerated. There is a value to the existence of movements in American Jewish life. That main value is  a certain sort of persuasive social power that movements have, as opposed to being a lone satellite in the synagogue universe.  The religious movements have the power and potential to speak, for instance, as a moral voice on social issues with far more weight that a lone community can.

(And please—can we stop calling the movements “denominations”? We’re not Protestants. And the word “movement” is a good one, implying dynamism and growth as opposed to stagnation and conformity.)

But as for each of us, as individuals:  I think the Jewish people would be much more cohesive if more of us saw ourselves with the flexibility to move between communities, recognizing the inherent worth of diverse expressions of Judaism—even if we naturally find ourselves at home in one setting over another.

I do recognize that there will remain an essential divide between Orthodox/halakhic communities and non-halakhic ones. I can understand why many women, for instance, would not want to participate in a shul with a mechitzah, or liberal-minded people in general could not pray in a community that doesn’t accept LGBTQ individuals. Likewise, I get why halakhic people can’t pray with communities whose siddurim are less-then-fully traditional. That boundary is real, and understandably so.

But my point is: as individuals, our identification should be with the Jewish people, rather than our own narrow sliver. As Professor Harvey challenged me a long time ago:  Have the self-confidence (and literacy) to interpret the Torah with authenticity and confidence, even while retaining the modesty to listen to others’ viewpoints. The Jewish people as a whole will be stronger for it.

In other words, when they ask you, “What kind of Jew are you?”, tell them: “A committed / creative / ever-growing / Mitzvah-loving / constantly learning / etc. sort of Jew.”

But as for the institutional labels? Leave them for the institutions where they belong.

Image: Isaac Mayer Wise, American Jewish Archives

Rabbi Harold Kushner ז״ל

I didn’t know Rabbi Harold Kushner all that well, but he did impact my life in two particular contexts.

First: I live in Natick, Massachusetts, the town where Rabbi Kushner lived and worked for most of his career. In the Jewish cemetery here his son is buried—Aaron, who died of progeria, the rare premature-aging disease which prompted Rabbi Kushner’s famous book When Bad Things Happen to Good People—and here on Monday he will be laid to rest.

I had never met him in person until I moved to Natick in 2005. The first time I ran into him in the Bakery on the Common, I was giddy—“I just met Harold Kushner!”—and he was very gracious and welcomed me to the neighborhood. More exciting was the second time I encountered him a few months later, when he came over and said, “Hi Neal!” Harold Kushner knew who I was!

After that, our paths crossed periodically: at events for local rabbis, or around town, or in contexts where he was a guest lecturer. He was always cordial and warm towards me.

But the main context in which I knew Harold Kushner is the same way in which countless other people knew him: He reached out through his books.

Just think, for a moment, about what a metaphysically extraordinary thing a book is. Through a book an author reaches across space and time to transmit ideas, provocations, comfort, and hope. Here’s the way Stephen King describes it:

What writing is: Telepathy, of course….

We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together. We’re close.

We’re having a meeting of the minds.

I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all… We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. (Stephen King, On Writing, 1997)

In this telepathic way, Rabbi Kushner reached me and countless people through his books. He was a publishing phenomenon, and through his writing, the healing wisdom of Judaism spread far beyond his reach in the pulpit or in the classroom - and to Jews and non-Jews alike.

I first read When Bad Things Happen to Good People in high school, as part of Temple Shalom’s Confirmation curriculum. (The assignment was simply: read a Jewishly relevant book and submit a report on it. How many synagogue Hebrew schools would expect their students to do that today? Very few, I bet.) It was probably the first book of theology I ever read, and the first place I learned the very Jewish tradition of wrestling with G-d, rather than offering apologies for G-d.

But every elegy for Rabbi Kushner is going to mention WBTHTGP, which made him famous. Personally, I return more frequently to some of his other great books, especially: Living a Life That Matters (2001), Conquering Fear (2009), and his self-published sermon collection Faith and Family (2007), among the others. Really, he never wrote a book that isn’t worthwhile. All of his books speak gentle but sublime spiritual truths, peppered with insights from classic Jewish literature as well as the lives of people in his community.

(By the way, many people don’t realize that he is the author of the “below the line” Torah commentary in Etz Hayim, which sits in the pews of many American synagogues. This, surely, is another aspect of his immortality.)

My personal favorite is How Good Do We Have to Be?, one of the wisest books I know. It’s typical of his style. The jumping-off point is a well-known Biblical touchstone; in this case, the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden. You may have thought that at this late date there wasn’t much more to say about Adam and Eve and the expulsion from Eden. Yet in Rabbi Kushner’s hands, it’s a stunningly contemporary exploration of universal themes: what it means to be a parent or a sibling, the American dysfunctional pursuit of perfection, healthy guilt versus unhealthy guilt, and the real possibility of being able to forgive others and ourselves. He always seems to have a perfect real-life anecdote at his fingertips (a skill that—as a writer and teacher—I covet desperately).

For instance,

The essence of marital love is not romance, but forgiveness.

….Romantic love overlooks faults (“love is blind”) in an effort to persuade ourselves that we deserve a perfect partner. Mature marital love sees faults clearly and forgives them, understanding that there are no perfect people, that we don’t have to pretend perfection, and that an imperfect spouse is all that an imperfect person like us can aspire to:

“For years I was looking for the perfect man, and when I finally found him, it turned out he was looking for the perfect woman and that wasn’t me.”

And:

How do you define a “good death”?... Let me suggest my own definition: a good death would be one that does not contradict what your life has been about.

…When we learn to think of life as a story, then we can come to think of death not as punishment, but as punctuation. What we want to know about a book or movie is not how long it is, but how good it is, and we can learn to think of life in the same way. (p.161-162)

And lest you still are under the misguided impression that after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit the expulsion from Eden was some sort of punishment—it’s not. Here’s Kushner’s midrash from the book, and it is a beautiful epitaph:

How the Story Might Have Ended

So the woman saw that the tree was good to eat and a delight to the eye, and the serpent said to her, “Eat of it, for when you eat of it, you will be as wise as G-d.” But the woman said, “No, G-d has commanded us not to eat of it, and I will not disobey G-d.”

And G-d called to the man and the woman and said to them, “Because you have hearkened to My word and not disobeyed My command, I shall reward you greatly.”

To the man, G-d said, “You will never have to work again. Spend all your days in idle contentment, with food growing all around you.”

To the woman, G-d said, “You will bear children without pain and you will raise them without pain. They will need nothing from you. Children will not cry when their parents die, and parents will not cry when their children die.”

To both of them, He said, “For the rest of your lives, you will have full bellies and contented smiles. You will never cry and you will never laugh,, You will never long for something you don’t have, and you will never receive something you always wanted.”

And the man and the woman grew old together in the Garden, eating daily from the Tree of Life and having many children. And the grass grew high around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil until it disappeared from view, for there was no one to tend it. (How Good Do We Have to Be?, pp.32-33)

Amen, and I’m grateful to know that through his writing he’ll continue to teach us for generations to come.

On the 75th Anniversary of Israeli Independence

Macht keine Dummheiten wherend ich tot bin.
"Don't make any stupid mistakes when I'm dead."

—Theodor Herzl

 Over my desk hangs my prized possession: A framed copy of Der Tog (“The Day”), the daily Yiddish newspaper published in New York from 1914 to 1971, dated May 15, 1948.

In 1000-point font, the headline cries Yiddishe Melukha (A Jewish State)!

On that day, the paper was printed in blue ink rather than black newsprint.

And there are images of three people on that front page:  President Harry S Truman, who sent official recognition from America; David Ben Gurion, the new Prime Minister; and Theodor Herzl, who set the political processes in motion half a century earlier.

I love this artifact and look at it every day. It was stashed away in my grandfather’s closet for years after he died; my grandmother presented it to me one day with an understated, “Do you want this?”

“This is what patriotism looks like: A return to First Principles, enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, signed by a mosaic of ideologically diverse patriots exactly 75 years ago.”

What I love about it is: It’s a reminder of the extraordinary impact of this moment for Jews everywhere in the world. As Ahad Ha’am predicted decades earlier, the arrival of Israel held enormous reverberations for Jewish people everywhere, not only those who would become citizens of the new state. Jews all around the world responded with celebration and wonder and dancing in the streets. Since it was Shabbat, special prayers were sung in shul the following morning. Most everyone recognized that a new chapter of Jewish history was being written.

I look at that headline with wistfulness today, as Israel is going through a revolution that is playing out in its streets.

What troubles me today are those—including Jewish leaders who should know better—who are saying that celebrating this 75th anniversary is “you know, complicated.”

I hope that for most of us, the celebration need not be complicated. 75 years is a wondrous milestone, a time for reflection and gratitude and celebration. We live in a generation that knows a Jewish state. What an incredible sentence that is! Our Jewish ancestors would have been astonished by that fact. Whoever they were, wherever they were in the world, they most certainly: (1) turned and faced the Land of Israel when they prayed; and (2) prayed daily to G-d to “bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth, and allow us to walk with dignity in our land.” They would have staggered to know that a Jewish state would become a reality, nearly 2,000 years after Jewish autonomy in our homeland ceased.

Look, I’m not naïve. I’ve been watching the political situation unfold in Israel for a long time. Israel is right now engaged in a genuine struggle for its very soul. For months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been pouring into the streets, on a weekly basis, demonstrating for democracy against the most extreme, autocratic, and corrupt regime that the nation has ever known. And those protests aren’t slowing down.

I’m with them. I know the implications if this governing coalition is allowed to succeed in its abominable, anti-democractic agenda.

But rather than ambivalence, I’m more energized than ever in my love for the state of Israel.

Why? Because those demonstrators in the street have revitalized me.

This is what patriotism looks like: A return to First Principles, enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, signed by a mosaic of ideologically diverse patriots exactly 75 years ago:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Tomorrow, there is a lot of work to do. It is imperative that we align ourselves with the voices of freedom, democracy, and peace.

Today, however, we celebrate—unambiguously, unapologetically, and with no small amount of wonder at reaching this moment. Our ancestors would have demanded nothing less.

Chag Samayach!

Invigoration and Pride About What Democracy Can Look Like

There’s an old truism: If you want to sound like a fool, just say, “You know, I’m really optimistic right now about the Middle East.”

I don’t want to be a fool. There are deep, possibly insurmountable, divisions in Israeli society. I know that Israel cobbled together the most radical, right-wing governing coalition in its history, and it has a substantial base of support. I know what Israel’s demographics look like, and they aren’t good.

“To those on the ground and in the streets: Thank you. You fill me with Zionist pride and democratic, patriotic inspiration.”

But what can I say? Today I realized that my heart is filled with… if not optimism, at least a sense of invigoration and pride for Zionism and the Israeli people. And it’s thanks to those protesters in the streets of Israel.

Maybe it’s because spring is here and the sun is shining. Maybe it’s because Pesach is right around the corner, with its promises that freedom always wins out against tyrants eventually.

Whatever the cause, I’m full of hope and admiration—yet again—for Israelis. Just seeing the depth and breadth of the protests against Netanyahu’s cynical attempt to overhaul Israel’s judiciary and to strip the nation of its democratic checks and balances gives me an enormous sense of appreciation for the vitality of Israelis.

Just consider some of these astonishing items:

·      The unceasing momentum: For 12 weeks, the streets of Tel Aviv and every other major city in Israel have been filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters, especially on Saturday nights – and the demonstrations are getting larger, not smaller! What endurance and momentum this movement has shown.

·      The size:  Israel has a population of about 12 million people. Hundreds of thousands in the streets, week after week? Can we imagine what percentage of the population has shown up? The photos, of course, are awesome…

·      The breaking news: Monday morning, the embassy and consulates of Israel in the United States are closed – the staff is on strike! All part of the protest against the assault on the judiciary and Netanyahu’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had the chutzpah to suggest pausing the radical legislation in the name of national unity. When have the embassies of any nation ever closed, on their own accord, in an act of protest against their own government?!

·      The flags: The protests are awash in swaths of blue, with Israeli flags prominently displayed and people singing Hatikvah. This is no anti-nationalist movement. The demonstrators are patriots standing up for democratic norms that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

·      The diversity: Despite Netanyahu and his minions’ desire to paint the demonstrators as anarchists, outside agitators, or worse. The truth is that the protests are the mainstream of Israeli society: reservists refusing to serve; military leaders refusing to show up; members of the center-left and center-right calling for sanity and a return to decency. And now the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor union—over half a million members, including airport workers, civil servants, and those government officials overseas—adds its voice.

How about this amazing scene: the Israel Philharmonic playing the national anthem at this week’s Tel Aviv protest!

THIS is what democracy looks like. And even though it’s emerging in desperate times, it’s invigorating to see.

This is a culture that is saying yesh gvul, there is a line that has been crossed by corrupt leaders who defy the will of the people—and then try to smear those righteous protesters with lies and propaganda.

As I’ve said, perhaps it will come crashing down tomorrow. The news cycle moves very quickly, and what I’ve written here may be out of date quickly. Netanyahu is corrupt, but he’s far from stupid. Maybe he’ll ram through his reforms, come what may. Maybe he’ll wag the dog with a military strike against Iran, and then call for “Jewish unity.” Maybe a cosmetic compromise will be achieved and the demonstrations will fizzle.

So I don’t want to foolishly say, “I’m optimistic about the Middle East.” But for now, my heart is filled with gratitude to those righteous protesters in the street. They should be an inspiration to lovers of democracy everywhere. We should be supporting their efforts in every way we can, especially in American Jewish and Zionist institutions to whom we pay dues. (We must demand of them: “Where do you stand?”)

To those on the ground and in the streets: Thank you. You fill me with Zionist pride and democratic, patriotic inspiration. And I’m counting down the minutes until I can come and join you!

What "Pro-Israel" Must Mean Today

רִבִּי יוּדָן נְשִׂייָא שְׁלַח לְרִבִּי חִייָה וּלְרִבִּי אַסִּי וּלְרִבִּי אִמִּי לְמִיעֲבוֹר בַּקִּרֵייָתָא דְּאַרְעָא דְּיִשְׂרָאֵל לִמְתַקְנָא לוֹן סָֽפְרִין וּמַתְנִייָנִין. עֲלוֹן לְחַד אֲתַר וְלָא אַשְׁכְּחוֹן לָא סְפַר וְלָא מַתְנִייָן. אָֽמְרִין לוֹן. אַייתוֹן לָן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אַייְתוֹן לוֹן סַנְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. אֵילֵּין אֵינּוּן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. לֵית אֵילֵּין אֶלָּא חָרוּבֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. וּמָאן אִינּוּן נְטוּרֵי קַרְתָּא. אָֽמְרוּן לוֹן. סַפְרַייָא וּמַתְנִייָנַיָּא. הָדָא הִיא דִּכְתִיב אִם י֙י לֹא־יִבְנֶ֬ה בַ֗יִת וגו׳.

 Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Nasi sent Rabbi Chiyya, Rabbi Assi, and Rabbi Immi to tour the towns of the Land of Israel…
They came to a place where there were no Torah teachers. They said, “Bring us the guardians of the city!”
The locals brought them the political leaders.
The Rabbis responded, “These are not the guardians of the city. These are the destroyers of the city!”

–Talmud Yerushalmi, Chagigah 1:7

 This Talmudic text is resounding today, as the despicable Betzalel Smotrich—incredibly, unbelievably—arrives in the United States as an envoy of Israel and as a featured guest at a Washington, DC, gala for Israel Bonds.

“We will fight to protect her from enemies from without—and within. ”

This is disturbing beyond belief. Israel Bonds, historically, has been the most apolitical of organizations; a trustworthy, mainstream body that markets a fine and secure way to invest in the infrastructure and well-being of the State of Israel.

Smotrich, on the other hand, is a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of Torah and Jewish values. He is a Kahanist, a racist, an inciter to violence. His statement last week that the Palestinian town of Huwara should be “wiped out”—as hundreds of his constituent settler extremists rioted there—is only the latest outrage of someone who has no business representing the State of Israel.

The fact that he is Israel’s Finance Minister and a minister in the Defense Ministry only shows the desperation of Prime Minister Netanyahu to elevate beyond-the-pale extremists to support “judicial reforms” that seem primarily designed to keep Netanyahu himself from being indicted.

This is not about partisan politics, not really. The fact that 300,000 people demonstrated in Israel’s streets this weekend—for the 10th week in a row!—shows that a plurality of left-center-and center-right is saying yesh gvul/there is a limit to what we will accept in a civilized society. Not long ago, Meir Kahane (יימך שמו—may the name of the wicked be blotted out) and his supporters were considered unacceptable, and were barred from sitting in the Knesset. Today, Netanyahu builds his coalition around them.

So what does it mean to be a supporter of Israel in these uncharted waters?

That’s the question I’ve been thinking about for weeks. Consider how astonishing it is: American Jewish leaders, proud and lifelong supporters of Israel, are demonstrating in front of Israeli consulates and the Grand Hyatt Hotel in DC where Smotrich is holed up. We are making our voices heard to local Israeli envoys that this government’s actions are beyond the pale of the normal discourse of left-and-right. Some even considered lobbying the Biden Administration to not grant Smotrich a visa to enter the country.

This pushback is amazing, and completely unprecedented in the 75-year history of Israel. It  also raises some questions about what it means to be “pro-Israel” at this time.

Let’s be absolutely clear: this anguish is coming from a place of desperately caring about Israel’s security, well-being, and, frankly, its soul. This is not coming from the extremist fringe of the American Jewish left, like the Orwellian-named Jewish Voice of Peace, which has long established their de facto support for Israel’s real and intractable enemies.

Israel constantly faces the threat of delegitimization, especially on college campuses and in progressive forums. And antisemitism is still a very real concern in the U.S and around the world. We certainly don’t want to fan either of those flames. So what is a concerned supporter of Israel supposed to do?

Here are my suggestions:

1.     Make absolutely clear: to be a Zionist is to support the righteous demonstrators in Israel’s streets right now. Every Thursday and every Saturday, Israelis have been demonstrating. The press is covering it as a single issue: opposition to Netanyahu’s “judicial reform.” But it’s wider than that: it’s also about deep-rooted fear for what this Coalition of Hate means for Israel’s soul.

We must be using every means at our disposal, including all our social media, to say, “As lovers of Israel, we support the demonstrations and condemn what this government is trying to do in our name.”  

2.     Engage more than ever. This is not the time to disappear from the conversation. Our Israeli brothers and sisters are making it utterly clear (as three prominent centrists made clear in this crucial letter last month): We need you now, more than ever.

That also means putting our money where our mouth is. If engagement begins and ends with kvetching on Twitter—well, that’s the coward’s form of activism. It is imperative that we send our financial support to organizations that are standing up for justice and democracy—not to mention forms of Judaism that are an alternative to the theocrats’ vision.

Personally, I support Hiddush—Freedom of Religion for Israel; the Israel Religious Action Center; ARZA; the Shalom Hartman Institute; and flourishing Reform and Conservative communities on the ground in Israel. Not to mention organizations that are doing the hard work of Jewish-Arab bridgebuilding, such as Givat Haviva and Shorashim/Roots. There are many others—all of them need our support and encouragement in these fractious times.

3.     It’s about Mishpachah. And Love. The Prime Minister and his amen-crowd will call us traitors. That’s the tactic of cowards.

But American-Jewish criticism of Israel must come from a place of love. That is, when I consider the people whom I love (and who love me), I don’t support everything they do. When someone I love is actively hurting themselves or going down a devastating path, it is my responsibility to step in, to let them know what I see, and to urge them—sometimes forcefully—to change course. But I don’t disappear.

If people we love disappear when times are tough, well, we might appropriately question whether they ever truly loved us in the first place. This is true, too, over our relationship with Israel.

The short-term future won’t be easy. Many American Jews will simply want to disengage, exhausted. And others, more perniciously, will say, “See—this is the real face of Zionism all along.”

But it’s about time that liberal Zionists make their position absolutely clear: Israel is our family, an astonishing chapter in the history of Judaism that yields perpetual gifts to contemporary Jewish life.

And we will fight to protect her from enemies from without—and within.

Moreover, the pro-Israel position must be clear. To paraphrase the language of the Talmud: Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, and their enabler Netanyahu are not the “guardians of the city.” They are those who would destroy it.

Topol's Most Amazing Feat

A brief thought about Chaim Topol, the legendary Israeli actor who died at 87 on Wednesday, that the obituaries seem to have missed:  In his acting career, he pulled off a pretty amazing feat. He simultaneously became the iconic onscreen Ashkenazi Jew and the iconic Mizrachi Jew.

Of course American Jews know Topol from his role in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof.  As Tevye, he took over the role that heretofore had belonged to Zero Mostel on Broadway. Movies have more staying power—and a broader reach—than stage performances, and for two generations it’s been Topol who has been the quintessential Tevye the Dairyman, the onscreen incarnation of Sholom Aleichem’s shtetl everyman.

This has always been my favorite scene from Fiddler:

But years before Fiddler, he was already immortalized to Israelis in the classic film Sallah Shabati—where he played the quintessential Mizrachi Jew.

Sallah Shabati is a satire about the Aliyah of the Middle Eastern Jews in the 1950s. I’ve watched and taught the film many times—as far as I can tell, it’s not explicit which country these Jews have arrived from. (It may be Yemen or Iraq). And their arrival is one comic disaster after another.

Sallah’s family arrive “on eagle’s wings” in the new country full of idealism and excitement. But they’re quickly shunted to a ma’abara, an impoverished settlement town for these new arrivals, which has more than its fair share of squalor. The movie was poignant and fairly controversial in those early days of the state, because it skewered all sorts of sacred cows: the kibbutz (presented as a place of chaos and laziness), the immigration authority (an utterly inept bureaucracy), political parties (cynical manipulators who look for ‘ethnic types’ to garner votes) and so on.

It's a comic take on the vicious and ugly racism the Mizrachi Jews received at the hands of the Ashkenazi elite with their socialism, secularism, and European touchstones. By contrast, the Mizrachim were religious—kabbalistic, even; had less familiarity with modernity and its implications; and culturally had more in common with the Palestinian Arabs than the kibbutzniks.

The very name “Sallah Shabati” is a double entendre: a perfectly legitimate Judeo-Arabic name, but also a pun that could mean “excuse me for coming here.”

Here's my favorite scene from Sallah Shabati, the song “Hamashiach Hazakein” (and watch the two Ashkenazi politicos, who spot Sallah and are eager to recruit him to Labor Zionism):

The movie Sallah Shabati is notable in additional ways. It was written and directed by Ephraim Kishon, a Hungarian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor. (In the death camp, Kishon was lined up with other inmates against a wall; the Nazis shot every 10th person in line. Kishon survived, and ultimately escaped while the Nazis were transporting him to Sobibor.) The movie was the first Israeli film to be nominated for an Academy Award (in 1964; it lost) and it still holds up today. In fact, it’s an important document to remind people of the terrible racism the Mizrachi Jews experienced at the hands of their Israeli brothers and sisters.

Anyhow, what a remarkable feat to portray both Tevye and Sallah!

(Two slightly sour reflections here. First, I wonder if in today’s identity wars, some would object to his playing both of these ethnic roles: be one or the other, but certainly not both of them.

Second, I’m thinking of the protesters in the streets of Israel these days. A sharp satire like Sallah Shabati reminds us all that sometimes the absolutely most patriotic thing you can do is to raise your voice and point out the injustices, or worse, that your country is perpetrating.)

Hats off to Topol, for pulling off this great feat! יהי זכרו ברוך.

Purim after Huwara

This week, leading up to the holiday of Purim, has been an awful one for anyone who cares about Israel and the Jewish people and the Image of G-d, tarnished and violated as it is. Violence in Israel is spinning out of control.

On Sunday, two brothers, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv from the Israeli settlement of Har Bracha were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

On Monday, another terrorist murdered Elan Ganeles, a 26 year-old Jewish man from Connecticut, in the Jordan Valley on his way to a wedding near Jerusalem.

“The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism.”

We mourn them without equivocation. We are pained as part of the interconnected body of the Jewish people, and we insist that their killers be brought to justice.

And then there is Huwara.

After the murders of the Yanivs, scores of radical armed settlers stormed through the Palestinian town of Huwara, rampaging through its neighborhoods throughout the night, burning houses and stores and cars, and leaving at least one man dead.

Even some Israeli military leaders are calling the settler rampage a “pogrom.” And it’s not hyperbole. After all, “pogrom” is the term that was created to describe mob violence against the Jews of Europe with the backing of official institutions like the Church, the government, and the press. Huwara would seem to be the first Jewish-perpetrated pogrom in history, as far as I know. The most radical elements in the government coalition have been seeding settler vioence for a long time—and have spent the past few days since the riot nodding at the perpetrators.  That should make every one of us shudder with nausea and disgust.

After all, perhaps the biggest disgrace is how all this was so predictable. For weeks, it has seemed like Israel is coming apart at the seams, as the most extreme and vicious coalition in its 75-year history gives its blessing to hate. The hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been pouring into the streets to demonstrate, week after week, show that this government is beyond the pale in it extremism for a huge swatch of this democratic society.

The despicable Bezalel Smotrich—a Kahanist, a racist, and also the Finance Minister who shares responsibility for civilian affairs in the West Bank—says, “Huwara needs to be wiped out.”

The vile Itamar Ben Gvir—another former leader of Kahane’s movement, the man whom Netanyahu saw fit to make National Security Minister with authority over the police in the West Bank—“likes” a tweet from a settler leader saying “Huwara should be erased today.” Ben Gvir is sponsoring a bill calling for the death penalty for Palestinian terrorists, while as of this writing no Israeli terrorists have been arrested for the Huwara violence.

And Prime Minister Netanyahu—who raised these men and others to positions of authority; a disgraced leader who has demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt to have not a shred of decency or integrity—has the audacity to compare hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Israel’s streets to the pogromists in Huwara!

(By the way, as of this writing, Smotrich is still the invited guest of American supporters of Israel Bonds in Washington, DC next week. It is imperative that American Jews make clear: Smotrich is persona non grata; he is not welcome in our communities; he must be denied a U.S. visa. He is a disgrace to everything the Jewish community stands for; a true Hillul Hashem.)

It may feel like Israeli society is imploding. I happen to think Israeli democracy is resilient—but not automatically so. For far too long, Israelis and the American Jewish community have been complacent about the poisonous weed of hate that has sprouted in the Israeli far-right. Now that it has moved to the mainstream, given authority and power by a corrupt and desperate Prime Minister. Will we continue to make excuses for it?

Democracy is a muscle that needs to be exercised or it will atrophy. I, for one, see a battle before us for the soul of the Jewish state. It is of desperate importance that anyone who cares about the Jewish future realize their stake in this, and that we do everything we can to support those hundreds-of-thousands-strong protesters for democracy and decency.

What might we learn from this week’s horrors—and how can we celebrate Purim on Monday night in the shadow of Huwara?

Let’s talk about the Megillat Esther.

Esther, it must be recognized, is a comic Jewish revenge fantasy. It’s not historical; it’s a rich and quite marvelous satire, that takes in lots of targets.

We need to understand the comic dimension of Esther in order to grasp the violent denouement that takes place the end of the book:

For Mordecai was now powerful in the royal palace, and his fame was spreading through all the provinces; the man Mordecai was growing ever more powerful. So the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies. (Esther 9:4-5)

…

The rest of the Jews, those in the king’s provinces, likewise mustered and fought for their lives. They disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking. (Esther 9:16-17)

In Esther, Jews who have been terrorized and threatened with mass destruction suddenly find themselves in a position to control their own destinies, with the precious ability to defend themselves against those who would destroy them. And then they massacre their enemies.

Did Esther anticipate Huwara?

We should note that violence—exaggerated, cartoonish violence—is an audience-pleaser. Consider, for example, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. It, too, is a revenge fantasy about a group of American-Jewish soldiers out to wreak revenge against every Nazi they can find in WW2-era Europe. The violence is grotesque, over-the-top, cathartic: at the end, Hitler and Goebbels and the entire Nazi senior staff are memorably executed by the “Basterds” en masse. Whether or not you find this entertaining (I must admit, I do) depends entirely on your sensibilities and your tolerance for fantasy violence.

To understand Esther, you have to understand the genre in which it is written. Esther is operating in this sort of mode. Did the Jews historically—in the name of self-defense and retribution against their genocidal enemies—slaughter 75,000 Persians? Of course not. It’s the projection of a community who heretofore has been oppressed.

And too many people don’t get what the Megillah is trying to teach with its outrageousness.

The theme that permeates Esther is inversion—events turn out to be 180 degrees from what they are expected or supposed to be. “…The very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power” (9:1).

But it’s not just the inversion of events that happens in Esther. There’s also an inversion of people:  And many of the people of the land professed to be Jews, for the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them (8:17). Can you imagine?! Those Persians were so scared of the Jews that they even pretended to be Jewish!

And perhaps that’s what’s behind the violent retribution of the Jews in Chapter 9 of the Megillah. When the Jewish defense squads of Shushan go wild and kill tens of thousands—is it so farfetched to say that this is the greatest inversion of all? Their enemies act like Jews, and the Jews act like their enemies!

And here’s where I’m going to stop laughing this year.

Because, as we know, humor is often a tool that reveals deeply hidden truths. “If you want to understand a society,” said Rebbe Nachman in one of his greatest stories, “you have to understand its humor.” Humor exposes things that a community strives to keep under wraps.

The Megillah predicted that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously. Huwara proves this to be so. In Huwara, we saw that Jews are just as capable as anyone of behaving monstrously, just as Esther predicted. Is there anyone left who believes that Jews, once in power, are immune from committing horrible acts? Everyone is capable of atrocities, and just because, on the historical balance sheet, Jews have usually been the victims, that is no reason to believe Jews can’t commit horrors. Huwara proves that, Q.E.D.

The measure of our integrity will be how forcefully, how clearly, we speak out against these forces. To make clear that the filthy ilk of Smotrich and Ben Gvir and the rioters crying for blood will not be the defining voices of Judaism and Zionism. Every one of us has to say yesh gvul (there is a limit to what we will allow in our names), and we must be the voice of democracy, decency, and justice—as envisioned by our Torah and by the founders of the State of Israel.

On Monday night, I’ll be with my community and we’ll read Esther again. We’ll boo and drown out the name of Haman; we’ll celebrate Esther’s bravery. We’ll drink a few L’chayims. But I’ll be reflecting on how Purim is ultimately about inversion and disguises—and how those Purim costumes have a powerful way of revealing deep truths about what lies behind the mask of seemingly civilized people.  

Parashat Tetzaveh - Israel's Ancient Ouija Board

Hi Friends,

My commentary on this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20-30:10), The Urim & Tummim: Israel’s Ancient Ouija Board, is now posted to Hebrew College’s 70 Faces of Torah page.

Enjoy!

Closing One Book & Opening the Next: 3 Years of Daf Yomi

“An ignorant person cannot be pious / לֹא עַם הָאָרֶץ חָסִיד,” said the 1st century BCE sage Hillel (Pirkei Avot 2:6). No other religious faith of which I know would quite make such an astounding claim.

Like all polemical statements, it’s unfair and exaggerated, and it probably would be considered irredeemably elitist if not for two mitigating factors:

1.     We’re all ignorant, at least in the vast sea of wisdom known as Torah and knowledge of G-d. That’s why every volume of Talmud begins on page 2: to teach spiritual modesty. In the words of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, “However much a person may have learned, we should always remember that we have not even gotten to the first page!”

2.     The Torah is an open book; Judaism does not secret away wisdom. It’s available to anyone who seeks it out with an open heart, and in our generation there are more classic texts available at our fingertips than at any other time in human history—and in translation! It’s all there for the taking, waiting for each of us.

So there’s more to Hillel’s statement than meets the eye. It means that learning—acquiring the knowledge that potentially leads to wisdom—is a Mitzvah; that is, a primary religious activity.

A week or two ago, I (and many others) reached a personal milestone: the 3-year anniversary of the cycle of Daf Yomi, the daily study of a page of Talmud. It takes 7½ years to go through the entire Talmud, which is the size of a set of encyclopedias—so we’re not even halfway through the cycle.

Daf Yomi is a phenomenon. The idea was proposed in 1920 by Rabbi Moshe Menachem Mendel Spivak (b.1880), a Polish rabbi and renowned figure in the Torah world of Eastern Europe in the early 20th century. The idea was carried forward by Rabbi Meir Shapiro (b.1887), the head of a great Polish yeshiva in Lublin and a leader of European Orthodox Judaism.

These two visionaries promulgated the astonishing proposal that, all over the world, Torah students would study the same page of text on the same day. With Rabbi Shapiro’s spearheading, the daily regimen of Daf Yomi began on Rosh Hashanah in 1923. It’s now in its 14th cycle and approaching its centennial year, with tens of thousands of adherents—Orthodox and liberal Jews, women and men alike.

There are no days off: we read our daily page on Shabbat and even Yom Kippur; it accompanies me on family vacations, and so on. For some, it is a social endeavor: they learn with a partner or a group (known as studying in chevruta) and listen to online lectures or podcasts about the Daf Yomi. For me, it’s a more private experience, as I’ll explain.

Even though I’ve had a passion for Talmud throughout my adult life, I’d always kept Daf Yomi at arm’s length. And for good reasons.

First, there’s a whole world of Torah study out there besides the Talmud, and I have a short attention span and a wandering mind. So by committing to daily Talmud study, I feared I was missing out. What about Hasidut? And Midrash? And Zohar? And all the other pearls of Jewish spiritual literature?

Second, I’ve been involved in a one-on-one Talmud chevruta for over 20 years. My partner Ben and I used to scoff at the very idea of Daf Yomi. After all, he and I move so slowly when we read Talmud together, and try to go deeply into the meaning of the text, so our pace is unhurried. We might spend our lesson on just a few lines; a whole page could take us months to complete. And a whole volume of the Talmud can take us years! A page a day? Ha! How superficial the speediness of Daf Yomi must be, just to get through it all!

I must admit, some of that thinking remains—and Ben and I still proceed at the same glacial pace as ever. But I approach my Daf Yomi regime differently than my learning with Ben. I treat it as a spiritual discipline. I typically have 45-60 minutes to devote in the morning, and I do what I can. I read the Hebrew/Aramaic text, but when I get stuck, I have no problem looking to an English translation as a crutch.

And if the discourse on the page gets too bogged down in pilpul—the logic gymnastics that assume every contradiction must be resolved and every debate of the early Sages must be smoothed over—well, I move on. My goal here is breadth, not depth.

While I might have scoffed at “breadth, not depth” in the past, I see now that there’s an excitement about mapping the Talmud from the 10,000 foot view. I’m excited to know that, at some point 3¾ years from now, I’ll have visited and made notations on every page of my massive Talmud set that casts its shadow over my workspace.

There are days when it can be daunting. Last year, the Daf Yomi community around the world worked its way through 122 days/pages of Tractate Yevamot: over four months devoted to the arcana of the Torah’s laws of levirate marriage, the ancient law that if a man should die childless, his brother must marry his widow in order to produce an heir. It can get, shall we say, a bit esoteric.

On Tuesday, we’re completing another volume: Nedarim, 91 days/pages devoted to the biblical laws concerning the declaration of vows. It can be pretty obscure stuff, and it demands a certain amount of discipline to persist.

Yet the Talmud is famously ADD, and there are pearls to discover along the way. For instance, in one of many asides in Nedarim, we find this wonderful passage:

Rav Yosef said: A sick person will forget his learning.
Then Rav Yosef himself fell ill, and he forgot all of his learning. Abbaye restored it [by learning] with him. This is why we say [throughout the Talmud] that Rav Yosef would say, “I never heard this law,” and Abbaye would reply to him, “You taught this to us directly, and it was from this baraita [earlier teaching] that you said it.” (Nedarim 41a)

My comment: Like the Torah, the language of the Talmud can be concise and blunt. But embellishing this story in my head, it becomes very emotional! I picture Rav Yosef, the wizened teacher, whose capacities have diminished because of the ravages of age or illness (maybe a stroke?). Perhaps his other students have left him behind, leaving a disabled old man to his caretakers. Yet here is his student Abbaye—one of the giants in 3rd-4th century Babylonia—gently talking Torah with his teacher and reminding Rav Yosef of the divine wisdom that is inside him.  

And:

Rabbi Yochanan said: Initially Moses would study the Torah and forget it all, until it was given to him as a gift, as it is written (Exodus 31:18): When G-d finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, G-d gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact. (Nedarim 38a)

My comment: I can relate, Moses. I wish I had a fantastic memory and could retain all the wondrous things I’ve read in the past few years. But what a treasure books are: repositories of wisdom to go back and revisit…!

If all this sounds very rigorous, one of the first things I discovered was: I find that I wake up in the morning anticipating getting to my desk and to the Talmud, to resume the conversation with Rav Yosef and Abbaye, Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer, Hillel and Shammai, and all the others.

So, onward… to, um, tractate Nazir: (only!) 66 pages devoted (ostensibly) to the laws of those who take the Nazirite vow in an ascetic desire to be more spiritual. No matter how arcane the material, I know that the discipline Daf Yomi accords me is good, and I know that there will be jewels embedded in the road along the way.

Image: the opening side of the first page of the first volume of the Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 2a