A Rabbi's World: Can You Get There from Here? A Jerusalem Story

As I write this blog, President Bush is making his way to Jerusalem (where I am), to participate in Israeli President Shimon Peres' "Conference on Tomorrow."  The conference itself is quite amazing.  Just this afternoon, Tony Blair chaired a session on visions of the future with Mikhail Gorbachev and some nineteen other heads of state in attendance (all in celebration of Israel's 60th!).  It was heady stuff!  And tomorrow, out of the blue of the western sky (let's see who gets that reference!), comes our own President to join the festivities.  As they would say in Hebrew, yihiyeh po sameah!  It'll be a little loony around here.

Truth to tell, the lunacy has already begun, if only on a practical level.  While here, I'm staying with my son and daughter-in-law who are living for the year in Rehavia, in the center of town.  In their mailbox yesterday was an 8x10 glossy multi-colored sheet detailing all the street closures (and other sundry inconveniences) that the Secret Service is demanding in order to insure the President's safety. And there are already more people wearing the same lapel pin talking into the palms of their hands than you can shake a stick at.  But of course you wouldn't want to shake a stick at these guys; they have no sense of humor.

Basically, they are shutting down downtown Jerusalem.  Not only is the street where the President is staying closed to traffic (King David), but all access roads leading to it, as well as all roads that might conceivably lead to it, are as well.  Additionally, there will be intermittent closures of all the other major arteries (whatever's left!) as both he and his entourage and the other heads of state are shuttled back and forth from the convention center where the conference is being held.

If your car is anywhere near any of these locations, it will be towed.  All of downtown Jerusalem has been warned to "park elsewhere" for the next few days.  You have to know Jerusalem well to appreciate exactly how funny that is.  Parking in Jerusalem makes parking in Manhattan seem like a picnic.  Just "park elsewhere."  Right.

On top of that, almost all of the rental car offices in downtown Jerusalem are across the street from the King David Hotel (where you-know- who is staying).   So if you have to rent a car (which of course I have to do), they are moving their offices and cars to a remote location far away from the center of town (which you won't be able to get to anyway because no taxi will be able to take you there because the streets will all be closed!

Now I'm from New York, and I'm used to street closures.  In fact, former President Clinton visited my synagogue while he was in office, and people are still complaining.  But most of the Jerusalemites I've spoke to would just as soon have President Bush spend the week of sheva brahot for his daughter Jenna in Texas, and leave poor old Jerusalem alone with its regular insufferable traffic.

As an honorary Citizen of Jerusalem for the week of this conference, I must admit to feeling the same way…

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A Rabbi's World: Making Room for the Big Things

Though so many people go away for Pesach these days, we congregational rabbis tend to stay at home, for the most obvious reason.  Leaving for a holiday is not really in the job description of a pulpit rabbi, unless you have lots of clergy on staff to cover you.  So, with more that a little wistfulness, my wife and I watched a few weeks ago as many of our friends left for here and there- little cleaning, no shopping!!!- and we went about welcoming our children home and hosting both seders, as we have for many years, each for somewhere near twenty-five people.

I'm a pretty involved husband as house things go.  I do a lot of shopping, and some cooking.  But I have never quite been able to grasp exactly how my wife Robin pulls this Pesach thing off.   It's just such an overwhelming challenge to turn your house inside out and upside down, and somewhere in the midst of that, host two major (scripted) dinner parties on two consecutive nights that last until all hours.  I stand in awe.

This year, because of the first days of the holiday beginning on Saturday night, we- like all observant Jews- had to do most of our cooking for the first days of the holiday before Shabbat even started, and store all the food…. somewhere.     

I became convinced over those first few days of the holiday that our refrigerator(s) were among those miraculous things mentioned in the Mishnah that were created bein hash'mashot… at dusk.  I can think of no earthly reason why all the food we made should have fit into them, even using the freezers.  I was completely sure that we would never be able to store it all.  But it was then that my wife- from whom I've learned many, many more significant things than this over the past thirty-one years- shared with me the secret of refrigerator space.  "Move the little things," she said, "to make room for the big things." 

It's easier, she said, to find new places for the smaller items than for the bigger ones, so get the bigger ones in there, and the small ones we'll figure out.  Sounds obvious to you, you're saying.  Well, it might be, but it wasn't obvious to me.  If it weren't for her, I'd still be standing in front of an open refrigerator, swearing that it wasn't possible to get everything in.  

But somehow we did. (Yes, that's why I'm in the humanities!)

Ever since that seminal moment in my spatial relations education, I've been thinking about the idea of moving the smaller things to make room for the bigger ones, and how it might impact (for the better, of course) this chronically time-challenged rabbi.  It's a little time-management book waiting to be written. And, of course, it has even bigger implications for what we decide to make priorities in our lives, and what we let get in the way. I'm thinking Oprah…

I'm on my way back to Israel on Saturday night, to attend a conference convened by President Shimon Peres in honor of Israel's sixtieth birthday.  I hope to be posting from Jerusalem next week. 

For now, to all in the Jewish community wise enough to appreciate the blessing of Israel's very existence, I join with you in mourning her losses in the wars that she has had to fight, and also celebrating the great joy of this milestone anniversary.  I hope we can all make room to appreciate this genuinely "big thing" that we all too often take for granted- the glory of having a sovereign Jewish state in our lifetime!  Chag Sameach to us all….
   

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A Rabbi's World:  Yom Hashoah 2008

With Pesach in our communal rear view mirror, there is precious little room for us to kick back and relax.  Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day- is already upon us, and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel is to be celebrated next week.  It is an incredibly dense stretch of the Jewish calendar, taking us on an emotional roller coaster ride from the high of Passover redemption to the low of the Shoah, and back again to the exhilaration of the miracle of Israel's birth.

Though I mention Yom Hashoah in the context of what both precedes and follows it in the Jewish calendar, the sad truth is that it stands alone, sui generis, lacking real context. 

It is certainly true that, as a scholarly endeavor, contextualizing the Holocaust is a legitimate and important field.  The roots of European anti-Semitism, the role of the church and of Christian teachings, what America knew or didn't know, did or didn't do…. All of this is important for insuring that the historicity of this monstrous event is fully documented and proved, and cannot be called into question as too many have already tried to do.

What I have experienced personally, however, is that the truest and most effective way to grasp the utter horror of that time is often to focus in on the narrower more than the larger perspective.   I personally came to this realization as I officiated, through the years, at the funeral services of survivor members of my own congregation in Forest Hills. 

As their family members sat with me to share information for their eulogies, I would hear the most incredible stories about these survivors- the same people who had quietly come to services on Shabbat and holidays, who had kibitzed with me and others about everything from synagogue politics to the fortunes of our local sports teams. 

This one was a partisan in the forest and lived for months on wild berries and rainwater; that one risked his life repeatedly to rescue his siblings; another was in five or six different concentration camps and then survived a death march when the Nazis had to evacuate the camp; yet another survived the war by fleeing to Siberia from Poland.  These are but a very few of the sagas, the individual stories, that lie behind the veneer of normal life that most survivors show the outside world.  

I have long been a proponent of the view that teaching children (and, for that matter, adults) that what was done to our people during the Shoah is the primary reason to live Jewishly today is an unfortunate and damaging idea.  We need to preach, teach and live a Judaism of joy and celebration, and we cannot and must not let the horrors of our history color our present in such a debilitating and all-encompassing way. 

But Yom Hashoah is a day when we are obliged to "go there;" to contemplate our enormous loss, grieve for the dead, struggle to absorb the implications of what was done to us, and understand the sacred challenge of memory.  There is no way to honor those who were killed without memory, and there is no way to remember without the pain, anger and loneliness that go with it.  And so it must be, at least on Yom Hashoah. 
 
 

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A Rabbi's World:  Mourning the Death of a Friend

Like many others, I'm sure, I awoke Sunday morning to the terrible news of the death of Rabbi Jacob Rubenstein and his wife Deborah, z"l, in a tragic house fire in Scarsdale.  I am horrified by the random and senseless nature of their death, and the loss that it represents for the congregants of his synagogue and for the Jewish community.

But in addition to the communal tragedy, I am deeply saddened by the loss of a man whom I met long ago under very unusual circumstances, and whom I was proud to call a friend and a colleague.

In 1987, Jake Rubenstein and I were part of a group of sixty-six rabbis who participated in a UJA Rabbinic Cabinet Mission to Poland, Turkey, Egypt and Israel.  We had never met before the trip, but over the course of our travels, we spent many hours talking, and sharing.  Traveling through Poland will do that; the things that we were seeing and the feelings that we were feeling created a special sense of hevruta among us all, and deep connections were fostered far more quickly than they would have been under ordinary circumstances. 

When we left Poland to spend Shabbat in Istanbul, shortly after the synagogue massacre there, the Friday night meal was particularly spirited, and the z'mirot were sung with gusto.  As if it were yesterday, I remember Jake banging the table with his fist as we sang, as if by sheer force of will he could generate the sense of peace and well-being that we needed so desperately to reclaim after the dispiriting places we had been. 

Jake was a proud Orthodox rabbi, but in an era where factionalism among American Jewish denominations was increasingly an issue, he wasn't scared or reluctant to befriend colleagues from other denominations.  I was as proud a Conservative rabbi as he was an Orthodox one, but he related to me seriously, and lovingly.  I valued that enormously at the time, and though we saw each other only periodically through the years, I always treasured our relationship.  He was a rare breed.

Rabbis spend a lot of time being professionally stoic about death.  We are usually expected to help others deal with their grief, and the way we do that is by suppressing our own- often at a considerable long-term price.  When we do allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss, either for a family member or a friend, it tends to hit us harder than many others, because the pain that we feel sits on the surface of so much other pain that lies more deeply buried.

I'm sure it would take years of therapy to unpack those layers, and I'm equally sure that most rabbis would be disinclined to go there, though they might admit that they need it.  But I don't need a therapist to tell me that Jake Rubenstein's death hit me hard, as it did so many others.  I liked him.  I respected the Jew that he was, and that he tried to help others be.  I know I'll miss him.  Rest in peace, friend…

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A Rabbi's World:  Thoughts at a Mikvah

I have worked with many Jews-by-Choice during my career in the rabbinate, far too many to actually be able to casually come up with a number.  Most of my rabbinical work involves rites, rituals and teaching that I've done many times before.  Conversion is no exception.  But while I occasionally will reflect on the challenge of "staying fresh" for bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, I never find myself challenged in that way when it comes to someone who is adopting Judaism by choice. 

 
I was reminded of this yesterday when, as part of a duly constituted Beit Din (Court of Jewish Law), I attended and participated in the final conversion ceremony of two very different people. 

One was an eleven-year-old girl of Asian descent who had been adopted as a baby and was converted, but never taken to mikvah; the other a young woman of color who, after marrying an Israeli in a civil ceremony, came to the realization that she wanted to live as a Jew.  The young girl has been studying in our Religious School.  The young woman has been studying steadily and seriously over an extended period of time to reach her goal.

I had been a little concerned about the response of the eleven-year-old girl to the prospect of mikvah and what it represented.  After all, since birth, she has been raised as a Jew, and loves her Jewish sense of self.  It's the only identity she's ever known. That she had not been taken to mikvah was simply a reflection of the fact that her previous conversion had not required it.  How, I wondered, would she respond to being told that she needed to go to mikvah now in order to complete the process of becoming a part of the Jewish people?

Well- she was thrilled.  Dressed in her best Shabbat clothes, she and her mother showed up early with smiles from ear to ear.  There is no way to describe how proud this adorable young girl was, and how pleased she was with herself.  A good day for the Jews, I thought to myself.

And then the other members of the Beit Din and I spent a few moments talking with the young married woman about what had brought her to this moment, and what challenges remained ahead for her.  With tears running down her cheeks, she talked of how some members of her family would never understand her, and would never accept her adoption of Judaism.  But she decided to go ahead because, at the end of the day, this is her spiritual journey, not her family's.   Her only concern is that she keep studying in order to insure that any children she and her husband might have would be brought up as good Jews.  And while she's talking, I'm thinking to myself "I'm not worthy to be in the same room as her."  I was so moved, and so impressed…

We spend so much time in the Jewish community being gatekeepers.  It is a well-established fact that being Jewish for most of us is an accident of birth.  Becoming Jewish is much harder.  All true.  But we would do well to remember how deserving of our respect are those who turn their lives upside down, and risk alienation from their families, in order to cast their lot with us. 

They are, by and large, amazing people.   And that's no accident of birth.

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A Rabbi's World:  Marital Fidelity: What a concept!

I've waited a week or so to write this, mostly because of my disinclination to write things that people will read and respond to by saying "Oh, well, he's a rabbi, what do you expect?"  I don't at all like when people say things like that.  It makes it sound like I- and all rabbis- are somehow less than human, that we don't know or understand what it means to live in the real world.

But now, having waited, I have to let it out.  Does anyone out there in public service still view fidelity within marriage as an active concept?  

It wasn't five minutes after the Sptizer resignation that the newly minted Governor Paterson- in a daring preemptive maneuver- stood with his wife and admitted that he, and she, had had numerous extramarital affairs.  Believing obviously that it was better to get the news out there than be hounded by rumors, the governor came clean.  But he's hardly the only one.  Even the most cursory read of today's newspapers will reveal a staggering number of public officials who are under unwanted scrutiny for illicit sexual relationships outside of their marriages.

When actor Richard Widmark died just a few days ago, the obituary in the New York Times pointed out that he had been faithful to his wife of fifty-five years because- paraphrasing here- he liked her.   As my wife said to me, "Actor faithful to wife; film at 11!"

What we are experiencing today is of course not a new phenomenon.

We wanted to believe that John Kennedy and his beautiful wife really had the idyllic marriage, but of course that was hardly the case.  The only difference then was that the press didn't talk about those things, by tacit agreement. 

Gary Hart changed all that when he virtually invited the press to follow him, and they did- with predictable results.  Former Mayor Giuliani has an interesting marital (and extra-marital) history.  Bill Clinton… oh, let's not even go there.  And now it's just so common, and so public, that we have no choice but to take note, and wonder at what it says about our culture, and our country, when marital fidelity among our leadership is so devalued. 

Oh rabbi, I can hear people saying- you are just so naïve.  But I don't think so. People have been cheating on their spouses for as long as there has been marriage.  Of course I know that.  Were it not the case, the prohibition against adultery would not have been one of the ten commandments.  You don't need to forbid what people aren't doing.  The temptation to stray is built into human nature. 

But working consciously to combat the less healthy temptations of human nature is, from my perspective, a pretty good working definition of the religious life. 

There are lots of choices that we might make as human beings with free will.  We can be or do whatever we want.  But that doesn't make every choice a good one, and we have certainly been confronted with a flood of egregiously bad choices, made by those whom, under optimum circumstances, we might fairly expect to admire.

I guess those people just didn't get the memo….

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A Rabbi's World: Obama and Rev. Wright Again

As I write, a fierce debate is raging among my colleagues, and indeed among Americans, about the relationship between Barack Obama and his minister/mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. 

Americans of all creeds are disturbed by Rev. Wright's comments- played on what seems like a continuous loop on YouTube- that essentially blame 9/11 on America, and reveal a huge reservoir of toxic anger against insults both real and imagined perpetrated by White America against Black people.

Jews are understandably disturbed by his warped understanding of the Middle East, seeing Israel as the source of all problems and the impediment to all solutions.  And, of course, there is Reverend Wright's unabashed admiration for Louis Farrakhan, whom he regards as a great man and a hero.   From where I sit, it's hard to be more wrong than that, and most Jews see it the same way.

In the middle of it all is Barack Obama, who happens to be a member of Reverend Wright's congregation and, of course, a serious contender to become President of the United States.  Compounding the complexity is the fact that Rev. Wright is not merely Senator Obama's pastor, but also a vitally important figure in his life.  He introduced the Senator to the serious practice of Christianity, officiated at his wedding, baptized his children… theirs is a serious and long-time friendship, forged through connection at the most critical times in Obama's life.

As a rabbi, I understand those kinds of connections, because I have them with members of my own community.  I respect what lies behind them, and never minimize their importance. When you've officiated at a couple's wedding, or named their children, or buried a member of their family, you in essence become a part of their family.  As I see it, that's the nature of the relationship between the Reverent Wright and Barack Obama. 

So here's my first question. 

Given that Rev. Wright is such a significant figure in Senator Obama's life, virtually family, isn't it still fair to ask whether or not, at a certain point, one is obliged to say "Enough?"

I wondered aloud with my own congregation this past Shabbat morning what it would take for me, were I sitting in the pews instead of on the bimah, to say that the opinions being espoused by the rabbi were so distasteful to me that I could not in good conscience continue to be a member of that congregation.  After all, Jews leaving one synagogue for another is a common enough phenomenon to have spawned countless jokes about desert islands and multiple synagogues.  I'm sure I'd have a tolerance threshold, even for a rabbi who meant a lot to me.  What is Senator Obama's threshold?  And why hasn't it been reached yet?

It may well be that large numbers of Jews will find it hard to vote for Senator Obama because of his disinclination to sever his connection to his church and its pastor.  I understand that, just as I understand the antipathy for Reverend Wright.

But having said all that, I would be dishonest to myself and to you if I didn't share the other side of this issue as I see it, just as I did from the pulpit yesterday.  The eloquent speech that Senator Obama delivered in Philadelphia last week, on the nature of race relations in America, obliges us to look in the mirror.  And when I do, what I find myself thinking is "When you live in a glass house, be very careful before you throw stones."

I have been a part of the professional Jewish community for almost three decades.  During that time, I have heard respected- even revered- teachers of Torah say the most strikingly insensitive, insulting, and inappropriate things.  Have their followers left them in protest?  Did they even notice that what their teachers were saying was horrific?

When the late Lubavitcher Rebbe said that Israeli soldiers were dying in Lebanon (during the first Lebanon war in the 80's) because Jews in Israel had failed to check their mezuzahs carefully, was there a fall-off in the Chabad ranks?  When a Chief Rabbi of Israel blamed the Shoah on the rise of non-Orthodox Judaism in post-Emancipation Europe, or a revered Rosh Yeshiva here in New York only recently said to students that an Israeli Prime Minister who advocated giving back parts of Jerusalem should be shot (twelve years after the Rabin assassination!), did they lose followers, or, for that matter, their jobs?  I don't think so. 

You can quibble with me about quantity and degree of outrageousness, and none of them are running for President of the United States.  But the point is the point.  We have our loose-lipped teachers and preachers too, don't we?  What are our standards?  What is our threshold, beyond which we say, "You can't be my teacher, or my rabbi?"

And further still… I am deeply concerned that the real issue that Senator Obama raised in his Philadelphia speech- about Black anger, and its pervasiveness in even "mainstream" Black communities- is one that we Jews all too easily decide not to hear, or are incapable of hearing. 

Yes indeed, Black anti-Semitism after the civil rights movement has made many in our community understandably disillusioned.  And yes- the unique nature of Jewish suffering in the Shoah has forever placed us on a different playing field when it comes to historical injustice.  I could never argue other.  But that surely doesn't mean that others haven't suffered also, and have reasonable grievances and justifiable anger.

Who other than we Jews, who have such a large reservoir of historical anger at what was done to us- are better positioned to understand the residual reservoir of anger in the African-American community?  Of course steps have been take to ameliorate the injustices perpetrated against them in the aftermath of slavery, just as steps were taken to ameliorate the injustices perpetrated against us. Just last week, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel was in the Knesset to continue that process.  Here in America, we enjoy freedoms and privilege that we once could only dream of.  But does that delete the anger, so to speak, from our communal hard disk?  Hardly.  And does it come out in ways both toxic and non-toxic in the ways we relate to both Jew and non-Jew?  Absolutely. 

So why is it so difficult for us to understand this phenomenon in the Black community?

This question, like so many different aspects of the issue of race relations in America, is difficult to answer.  Altogether, the topic is a difficult one to address, because it takes but a moment for someone in the conversation to become insulted.  For taking the conversation to a higher level, I think Senator Obama is to be congratulated, whether one votes for him or not.
 

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A Rabbi's World: Where We Should be Talking about Eliot Spitzer

"Spitzer-fatigue" has set in.  For an eclectic variety of reasons, not least of which is the tawdriness and blatant hypocrisy of what Governor Spitzer was engaged in, most people appear to have had enough.  It's time to move on, they say, and to let him and his family deal with the detritus of his epic fall from grace.

By and large, I agree.  There is little to be gained by rehashing what is known, and speculating about what is not.  True enough.  But personally, I don't think that there's been enough discussion about it with our children. 

I did a decidedly unscientific sampling the other day of some of the teenagers who are in my orbit.  I teach a Hebrew High School class made up mostly of girls from some of the best public and private schools in New York City.  When I suggested to them that, in lieu of our regularly scheduled subject for that day, we spend some time talking about the Spitzer story, there was a bit of an awkward silence.  I asked them whether or not they had discussed it in any of their classes, the answer was an almost unanimous no.  One or two teachers had made a passing reference to it, but that was all. 

When I pushed them a bit about it, they expressed some considerable surprise that it was such a big deal.  "In Europe this wouldn't be such a big story," they said.

Then I asked my own two younger children, who attend Ramaz and Heschel High Schools, and they, too, answered no.

Why is this, I asked myself? 

You might be thinking, "too risqué for schools.  Parents should handle it.  It's not the appropriate subject for teachers or rabbis (also teachers) to be addressing."

Well, in a perfect world, where parents have the kind of open lines of communication with their children that make all subjects approachable and discussable, maybe.  But my experience has shown me that those kinds of homes are few and far between.  Most parents shy away from talking about the kinds of issues raised by the Spitzer affair, and leave their children to process them for themselves.

I think that's a terrible mistake.

Learning that people in important positions are human beings with clay feet is one of the most important life lessons a child (of any age) can learn.  Among the people who fall into that category are, potentially, parents themselves, rabbis, teachers, friends, and just about everyone they know. 

The devastating results of a serious betrayal of trust are difficult enough to deal with, even when one knows and understands human frailties.  When a child is left to figure all this out on his/her own, it's exponentially harder, and more damaging.  Schools and synagogue classrooms are exactly where our children should be talking about what happened, not out of prurient interest, but as a cautionary tale.  Well-prepared teachers and rabbis are precisely the right people to be bringing a little healthy skepticism into the mix, since they are powerful authority figures in the lives of the children they teach and mentor.

I did talk about the governor with my Hebrew High School students, and my own children.  I hope the message got through.
 

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A Rabbi's World:  On the Meteoric Fall of Elliot Spitzer

What are we to make of Elliot Spitzer's dramatic fall from grace?  How can it be that the man who was swept into office by a record plurality of votes, running as the Mr. Clean who "judged every decision before him simply on the basis of whether it was right or wrong," as one of his campaign ads suggested, could be so very, very wrong on so basic a principle?

The answer, I'm afraid, is simple.  It "could be" because, without the trappings of power, the bodyguards, the swashbuckling political persona, and the political packaging, Elliot Spitzer is a man. 

A human being.  All of us- myself very much included- were shocked by what we learned about his private life because we had bought into the packaged myth of his public persona.  It was exactly as he and his handlers had orchestrated it.  We didn't know Elliot Spitzer the man.  We knew Elliot Spitzer the myth, the square-jawed, unflinching crusader for the common man against those who would exploit us.  We knew the myth, we bought into the myth precisely as it was packaged, and we voted for it in record numbers.  And now that the myth has, to our horror, been shown to be a myth, we are shocked and dismayed.

We really shouldn't be.  But we are, because we, too, are human, and we, too, want to believe in those who would claim to be better than we are.

The Elliot Spitzer that we thought we knew was presented to us as a family man.  He has what by all external appearances are a lovely wife, and three charming daughters.  But the sad truth would appear to be other that the packaged image. 

I don't doubt that he loves his daughters, and maybe even his wife.  And they probably are lovely.   But the life that he was living in secret was in such dissonance with the packaged image that it leaves us stunned.  How could it be that the man in those beautiful family portraits is the same one who paid thousands of dollars over the years for the services of prostitutes?

It could be about power. In my seminar on professional skills for graduating rabbis and cantors at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I remind my students as often as I can about the nature of power, and how to use it wisely.  Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.  It can make you feel invulnerable and untouchable, and can be as intoxicating as any drink or drug.  Maybe, just maybe, those extramarital trysts were about power.  "Because he could," so to speak.

Or it could be about a pathological addiction to a particular kind of sex.  That, too, is possible.  It brings to mind the adage about so many people living lives of quiet desperation.  There are surely many more people than Elliot Spitzer living ostensibly "straight lives" despite the fact that their sexual orientation is other, and their needs cannot be met in conventional relationships.

The bottom line is that we don't know, we probably will never know, and it only arguably matters for us to know.  Whatever Elliot Spitzer's demons are, it is he who must confront them.  And as far as I am concerned, I am far less disturbed for the body politic of the state of New York than I am for his wife and his daughters, whose agony I can only imagine. 

The whole thing is a horror.  I'm grateful for his resignation, and I pray for him and his family.  The state will certainly survive.  I hope they do.

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A Rabbi's World: Soldiers in the Army of Torah

Just a few hours ago, an Arab terrorist (maybe two?) made his way into Yeshivat Mercaz Harav in Jerusalefom and opened fire, killing at least seven Yeshiva students and wounding many others.   It doesn't take a political scientist to attribute this heinous act of barbarism to some form of revenge for Israel's actions recently in Gaza.  Significant numbers of civilians were killed in those actions, and the conventional wisdom in that part of the world is "blood for blood."

 When I was spending a year of my rabbinical studies in Jerusalem in 1978, there were a number of terrorist incidents, but one stands out most clearly in my mind.   It came to be known as the "Coastal Road Massacre."  After coming ashore in Kibbutz Maagan Michael and killing nature photographer Gail Rubin, terrorists occupied a bus on Israel's k'vish hachof and ultimately, more than thirty Israelis were killed.  Among them, I recall, was a young clarinetist. 

The perpetrators of the massacre claimed that all citizens of Israel were appropriate military targets, since they were instruments of Zionist aggression.  I remember an op-ed piece that Cynthia Ozick wrote titled A Soldier in the Army of Clarinets.  How absurd, she said, to make such a claim.  In what possible way could this young musician be blamed for anything?  In what army was he a soldier?

 I can't help but think of that article today, as thirty years later, the same kind of senseless violence continues to be an instrument of some obscene and absurd political statement.  The yeshiva students who were killed were, ironically, celebrating the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Second Adar.  In our tradition it is a time of great joy, as we prepare to observe Purim, and commemorate our historic victory over a senseless hatred that threatened our very existence as a people. 

 I have no illusions about the purity of all Torah study.  My last entry in this blog decried the abuse of Torah learning by rabbinic authorities in Israel, and only the most naïve would deny that the nexus between religion and ultra-nationalism is a potentially toxic one.   Yes, religion plays a role in Israeli politics.

  But on Rosh Chodesh Adar- the beginning of this new month- those students were simply celebrating their religious tradition in a way that no one could construe as hostile.  Yes indeed- what an act of bravery and resistance it was to burst into a Yeshiva and start shooting a bunch of unarmed students of Torah.   Soldiers in the army of Torah… How brave.

 Without a doubt, the moral relativists will rationalize this act as the reprisal for Gaza.  It's so tempting.  But there is all the difference in the world between an enemy that hides its missiles and missile launchers among civilians, shooting them daily at non-combatants in undisputed territory in Israel, and a bunch of Yeshiva students celebrating Rosh Chodesh in Jerusalem.

 Isn't there?  Do you have to be Jewish, and Zionist, to see that?

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A Rabbi's World: One Person, Two Homes…

One of the early op-ed pieces that I wrote for the Jewish Week was titled Between Two Flags.  Written during the second intifada in Israel, it spoke to the cognitive dissonance I often feel when I stand up to preach a sermon in my synagogue, my podium located between the Israeli and American flags.  One person, two homes…

 This morning, I returned from ten days in Israel, and I am feeling that dissonance acutely.  As I was leaving, family and friends in Israel wished me a "safe trip home," and of course their wish made perfect sense.  After all I live in Forest Hills, and work there, pay taxes there- you get the point.  By all objective criteria, it is my home.  It feels good to walk into my house, sleep in my own bed, see my cars in the driveway.

 But coming home from Israel is a uniquely unsettling experience for me.  It challenges all those basic assumptions about home and hearth, and forces me to once again encounter those lingering, nagging questions about why I am here, and where I belong. 

 It was, strictly speaking, work that brought me to Israel this time, as I've written about recently in this blog.  There were certainly moments during this recent congregational mission that I felt as if my work as an American rabbi was at its highest level.  Introducing American Jews to the magic of Jerusalem and Israel and helping them appreciate their timeless and timely significance is why I do what I do.  Many of them were there for the first time, specifically because I was there with them.   Without a doubt, traveling through Israel with them was a far better use of my time than attending meetings here in New York.  I listened to them closely as they were leaving, and their interest in Israel had been sparked and stoked.  Score one for the good guys, I thought to myself.

 But at the same time, I never, ever leave Israel- not even with such satisfying professional feelings as I had this time- without that difficult to shake feeling that I might be doing even more important work there, no matter what I was doing, simply by living there.  I am not necessarily convinced that a Jewish studies teacher in Israel is not doing more important work for the Jewish people than an American rabbi is doing here in New York.  Both are engaged in the cause of Jewish survival, and only one puts his/her life on the line in the name of that cause by serving in Israel's army. 

 You might read this and think "gratuitous guilt."  I'm sure some of my friends in Israel read it that way, and I understand them.  I also understand why I do the work I do, and hence the source of my conflict. 

 At the end of the day, I'm here and not there, so no matter what mixed feelings I might have, I have made my choice.  Like the fictional Private Ryan, I feel a special obligation to insure that my life and how I live it justifies the circumstances.  After a trip like the one just concluded, I allow myself a few minutes of feeling good about my work.  But it's never easy to leave Israel.

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A Rabbi's World:  The Israel Magic Still Works

As I wrote last week, I am spending this Presidents Week in Israel with forty-one parents and children from the Religious School of my synagogue in Forest Hills.  Most of them have either never been to Israel, or haven't been here in thirty years or more.  There are nineteen young students on this trip, from freshmen in high school down to the earliest grades.  So far, weather notwithstanding, it has been simply wonderful to be here with them.

I am not, to say the least, a stranger to Israel.  I've lived here for two years as a student, and travel here once or twice a year, if only to visit family. 

So much of my work involves interpreting Israel and its situation for my congregants that I regard it as a sacred responsibility to know what's going on here in all its complexity.  My Friday night reading is not complete if it doesn't include as many Israeli newspapers as I can get my hands on.  I struggle with the question of religious pluralism in the Israel that I love, with the implications of the Winograd Commission, with the trials and tribulations of my family there…. I know well that Israel is not Disneyland.

But I must admit that it has been an invaluable tonic to my spirit to watch people fall in love with Israel for the first time.   It's been a while since I've witnessed that, when first-timers are completely without the cynicism that characterizes so much of what goes for American Jewish views of Israel these days. 

I remember now what it felt like when I first "got" Israel- when I first realized how existentially significant the implications of a Jewish homeland  were for me as an American Jew.  During this intense week, I have the chance every day to look in the eyes of the wonderful parents and children I am traveling with and watch them fall in love.  Such a privilege…

I have made a conscious decision on this trip not to focus on Israel's myriad problems.  If I do my work well, there will be time enough for my fellow travelers to figure out those problems, because they will come back, again and again.  From where I sit, you can only criticize Israel if you are invested in her security and well-being.  Once they understand why they must love Israel and be invested in her future, then we can talk more fully about the problems.  But not yet…

Like all epic romances, the beginnings are far less complicated than what it to follow.  But the beginnings lay the groundwork to which you return when things get more complicated.  You go back to the beginning to remember why you fell in love in the first place.  And that's what I hope I'm accomplishing here… creating beginnings.
  

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A Rabbi's World:  How Do You Measure Success?

In the world of the pulpit rabbinate, it is rare indeed for a rabbi to stay in one community- one pulpit- for his/her entire career.  Most rabbis change communities at least once, many far more often than that. 

I am one of those few rabbis who has stayed in the same community throughout my rabbinic career, all twenty-seven years of it.  In fairness, I guess I should say that I stayed, and the lay leadership let me.  Ours has been a mutually respectful and gratifying relationship, with all of us enjoying the blessings that come with continuity of leadership and shared vision.  As I've said many times, I consider myself a very lucky rabbi, and on my good days, I allow myself to consider my community lucky as well.

One of the challenging aspects of serving the same community over the long term is learning how to measure, and then re-measure, success. 

When you change communities as a rabbi, you can pull out your best sermons as if they were new, run your most successful and inspired programs and get credit for them all over again… you get the picture. 

But when you stay in the same community, the task of staying fresh and innovative- of doing something genuinely new, or accomplishing something you've never been able to accomplish, is a daunting one.  The tendency is to glide along on established patterns- the rabbinic version of "do no harm."  Doing no harm is a good thing to be sure, but it's not enough. 

One of the things I've always wanted to do is take a group of people to Israel who have never been.  I've led many congregational tours to Israel, mostly repeat visitors, always five-star in every way.  I have enjoyed each one enormously, and the last one I did also took us to Poland first- an experience none of us will ever forget.

This Wednesday night, I get to realize that other dream. 

A large group of parents and children from my synagogue's Religious School are traveling with me to Israel for ten days, along with the director of our Religious School.  Few of those families have ever been to Israel before. 

I am in awe of the commitment these families have shown, many spending hard-earned savings to realize their own life-long dream, and share it with their children.  Even going down a star or two in hotels, it's still a real stretch for families to go on a trip like this together.  It's one thing to send a child on a summer trip, which is expensive enough.  It's still another thing to let Birthright do the heavy lifting.  Many do.  Who can argue with sending your child on a trip to Israel paid for by the community?

But when I get on that plane with these families, I will feel more successful than I have felt in a long time. They are really walking the walk, and they're walking it with me.  The very best part of it is that I have the chance to show them the Israel that I love, and maybe- just maybe- begin for them a life-long love affair with Israel that will bring them back there again and again.

All these years down the road, it feels good to feel so good!

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A Rabbi's World: Of Giants and Jews

One of my earliest childhood memories is of Y. A. Tittle, former New York Giants quarterback, sitting on his knees with a bloodied face in Pitt Stadium after a loss to the Steelers.  I grew up with the Yankees and the football Giants being two of the main focuses of my life.  Mantle and Maris, Frank Gifford, Alex Webster… the stuff of my youth.  So many fond memories!

I'm glad to say that twenty-seven years in the rabbinate haven't cured me of all my childhood habits, and I happily admit that the Giants' unanticipated Super Bowl victory last Sunday made me one very happy person.  I was a kid again for the last few minutes of that game.  I hung on every play, and let out quite the scream when Eli Manning found Plexico Burris in the corner of the end zone for what proved to be the winning touchdown. 

My two sons- one in Israel and the other at a Super Bowl party in Manhattan- were furiously texting me.  Ah, I thought to myself, I have succeeded as a parent.  They're enjoying this as much as I am!

With the benefit of a few days to mull that incredible game over, I am amazed by the degree to which- like other truly memorable sporting events- it featured a meta-theme that transcended what was going on in the game itself.  It was all about redemption. 

Tom Coughlin went from having one foot out the door at 0-2 to a Super Bowl victory and, no doubt, a new and lucrative contract.  Eli Manning went from being everyone's favorite whipping boy to a prince of the city.  When you're a guest on David Letterman's show, you know you've become cool. 

Manning spent most of the year playing the role of "lost child."  Now he's ultimate cool.  Joy comes in the morning, I guess…

While the kid in me celebrates what the Giants accomplished as a fan, the rabbi in me can't help but wonder at how the Giants did what they did; not just winning the Super Bowl, but running the table in the playoffs with every game on the road.    Think about it.  Towards the end of the season, the Giants were still finding ways to lose the games that would seal their status as a playoff team, and then- something happened.

 How I'd love to know what that "something" was.  What happens to- as I admit to calling them before the playoffs- the worst 10-6 team in the NFL that makes them an unbeatable juggernaut? 

The answer, I suspect, is what they themselves said: they became a  team.  They were able to discover in each other something greater than themselves, and to submerge their own individual senses of self in the greater good of the ensemble.  In so doing, they achieved at a previously unimaginable level of achievement.   

Wouldn't you love to know what flipped that switch?

I would.  And if I could find it out, I'd give it as a gift to the Jewish community, so that we could work as a team and not be at loggerheads so much of the time.  Think of what we could do!

New York dreamin' on such a winter's day….

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A Rabbi's World:  Barack Obama and the Jewish Problem

In a predictable and terribly disturbing way, the campaign of rumors being waged against Barack Obama in the Jewish community has begun to stick.  I am not at all sure that he is the candidate that I would/will vote for in either the primaries or the general election.  I have issues with his candidacy, as I do with almost everyone who is running. But I find it painful that it is so easy to discredit him by appealing to the basest, most ethnocentric fears of so many in our Jewish communities.

Why is it, I wonder as both a Jew and a rabbi, that when push comes to shove, our buttons get pushed so easily?  Why are we so ready to believe the worst about those from outside our community whom we may perceive as threatening?  And why is Barack Obama threatening to our community?  Is it because he is an African-American?  And if that is the case, as it might well be, why do we need to feel that way?

I mentioned that I have issues with Senator Obama's candidacy, and I do.  The biggest one has to do with his relationship with his minister, whom he regards as a mentor and a close friend.  The fact that this minister lauds the work of Louis Farrakhan does indeed give me pause, and makes me wish that Senator Obama would disavow him (and not just Farrakhan, which he has done).  For better or for worse, if Obama wants to represent me and my concerns as a Jewish American, then I don't want his "mentor" anywhere near the halls of power.

But this concern does not in any way require that I vilify Senator Obama, or imply that he is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, or studied in a madrassa, or grew up a Muslim (also not a sin, as best as I can tell).  What lies behind this effort to smear him and his campaign?  What is it deep within the Jewish psyche that makes us all too ready to believe the worst about "them?"  It is surely not our most appealing quality as a people, or a community…

One is tempted, in an effort to find an answer to these questions, to invoke the traumatic legacy of our persecution, and particularly the Holocaust, as an "excuse" for our communal neurosis about the "other" that borders on paranoia.  But it's too easy an out, I think.  It's too easy for me, as a rabbi, to rely on that as an excuse for everything we might do as individuals and as a community that is less than savory.  Too easy, and not at all honest.  We are hardly so pure and clean ourselves.

Honestly- I think we all need to be looking in the mirror and wondering if we like what we see.  Our survival instincts are sometimes too powerful, and they get in the way of our ability to see things clearly and accurately. And the price of our mistakes in this regard can be very high indeed. 

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A Rabbi's World: The Challenge of Change / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

I have been following the recent ups and downs of the early presidential primaries with a kind of wary interest.  The rational side of me realizes how very early it is in this process. With the relentless news coverage that has become a numbing voice-over for the political landscape, it has become difficult to discern any statement on the part of almost anyone that actually goes beyond the cliché. 

On the other hand, there are those few moments when one begins to hear broader themes emerge, and that is when my rabbinic ears perk up.

I am particularly fascinated by the preoccupation with change- this campaign's emerging mantra- and its perceived antithesis, "experience."  

What I am writing is in no way to be construed as an endorsement of any particular candidate or as a negative statement about another, but it's hard to miss the not so subtle message of much of the recent polling.

It seems that Americans, whether Democrat or Republican, regard the stated desire to change the status quo as a greater claim to leadership than experience in governing.  I guess it's a statement on how very unhappy people are with the current administration.  The real-time obstacles that lie before the person who claims readiness to "change the way business is done" are simply not a crucial consideration.  Experience is nice, but it implies "old school."

In my line of work, I hear a constant clamoring for change.  Mostly, it comes from the younger members of my movement.  They tend to regard the more formal style of worship so characteristic of synagogues of the past generation as an insurmountable obstacle to spirituality.

But it's a funny thing about change as it manifests in a religious context.  So much of the experience of religious practice is rooted in the charm of the familiar, and the majesty of the traditional. 

Ask any Cantor what happens if he/she tries a new or different melody for a section of the Shabbat morning service, even  Adon Olam.  People consider it an affront to their prayer experience. "I come to synagogue to her that melody!"

The more I witness this complicated dynamic, the more I sense that people want change, as long as they're the ones doing the changing, and the change reflects their particular tastes.  Change is problematic when it comes from the top down.  It has to trickle up to be valid and compelling.

And what trickles up to me tends to be conflicting messages.  I have people who would do anything to change the way things have always been done, and others who would do anything to preserve that way.

Change is not a simple process, in politics or in synagogues (not that synagogues have politics, of course…).
 
 

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A Rabbi's World:  Re-Entry / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

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A Rabbi's World: Taking the Long Way Home /  Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

After close to two wonderful weeks visiting family in Israel, the time came to go home.  It always does, and I'm never quite ready for it.  Having lived in Israel for two years and traveling there at least twice a year since,  it takes me just a very short time to get back into the rhythms of Israeli life. Once I do, it's like I never left.  And then I leave again.  It never feels good to leave Israel.

So my flight to the States (not El Al, before you read further) was scheduled to leave Israel at 5:10 PM to arrive at JKF at 10 PM the same day.  By the time my plane landed in Israel, the departure time of my return flight had already been delayed to 6:40PM, to arrive at JFK at 11:40PM.  Okay, I thought; it's not great, but delays happen. 

When I get to the airport, the time is passing and we're not boarding.  Clearly something is brewing, and finally, long after we were supposed to be airborne already, it is announced that, because of "weather"- isn't there weather everywhere, I'm thinking?- we need to stop in Europe to take on extra fuel to account for stronger headwinds.  Oh joy.  And where will we be stopping in Israel, I ask?  Germany, I'm told; Leipzig, to be exact.  How wonderful, I'm thinking.  Just where I want to be.  All I want to do is get to Queens, and I'm going to Germany.

Three or four hours later- who remembers?- we land in Leipzig with a cheerful "Welcome to Germany" from the pilot, and are told to stay on the plane while the refueling is taking place.  I look out the window at the frigid night, and there are three police cars near our plane with the word "Polizei" boldly emblazoned on their doors.   And all I can think about is Israeli athletes sitting on a tarmac in 1972 with the "Polizei" all around, and how well that turned out.

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I continue to be amazed at how visceral my feelings towards Germany are still, I who was born in the United States and lost no one in my family in the Shoah.  How vividly I remember being in the old El Al terminal at JFK, next door to Lufthansa, and getting goose bumps from entering the Lufthansa terminal and seeing a sign that began with the word "Achtung."    Of course it did; it's German, and Lufthansa is Germany's airline! 
         

But that very word in that very language conjured up for me a meaning completely out of context, as did an innocuous refueling stop in Leipzig.  Sitting there on the tarmac, I felt as if Rod Serling was about to appear, and I had crossed into some eerie Twilight Zone kind of place.  But then again, it was the middle of the night, I was tired and cranky, and all I wanted to do was go home- not be in Germany, where achtung and polizei can never be normal words for me.

I walked into my house at 4:15AM.  It had been a long night.

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A Rabbi's World: Christmas in Israel… Who Knew? / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

Having spent extensive and sustained amounts of time in Israel during my life, it doesn't take me long to get back into her unique and idiosyncratic rhythms. 

For all of the transplanted Americans in Israel and particularly in Jerusalem, where I have been these past few days, there is little here that is like New York.  Some Americans shy away from buses for security reasons.  I, personally, was more than happy to take buses around the city, but trying to get on one in the center of town, even trying to get near one, requires a measure of intestinal fortitude that I just don't have.  Some of those people should play forward for the Knicks… it could only help.

What has been particularly fascinating to me has been encountering anew the phenomenon of Christmas in Israel.  I've been in Israel many times over the December break, and each and every time- this one very much included- I've been completely amazed at the absence of Christmas in the public consciousness. 

There are certainly Christians here; the city is quite crowded, hotel rooms are at a premium, and there are many, many Jewish tourists as well.  I read that Bethlehem was the most crowded this year that it's been for a decade. 

But the public rhythm of Israeli life is not geared to the secular calendar.  Electronic and print media are not saturated with ads about gifts; the music on the radio is the same as it always is; restaurants are open… life goes on.  If you've ever been on the road on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in America, you know what's it's like trying to find anything at all open.  Not here.  Today was Tuesday, 25 December, and it looked and smelled a lot like Monday, 24 December.

So it makes you think about what it means to feel at home even when you're in a country that is not, strictly speaking, your own. 

You can't help but notice the absence of the relentless commercialism of the Christmas machine, and of the constant (at least lately) undertones concerning the relationship between being a "Christian leader" and one's fitness to be President of the United States.  I feel at home in America, too- a country that, I often sense, is not really "my own," either in any absolutely secure sense. 

Israel is no Eden, to be sure, and problems abound here that, as Tevye says, would cross a rabbi's eyes.  Truth to tell, rabbis cause a lot of them.  But I do feel at home here- especially at this time of year

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"What Brings You Here?" / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

Sometime late last night, I arrived in Israel for a two-week visit.  My son and daughter-in-law are studying in Jerusalem for the year, and my aging mother, sister and her family live in Rehovot.   The somewhat slower pace of December afforded me the chance to pay them a visit.

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Longevity in a Taxing Profession / Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

The Jewish Theological Seminary awards Doctor of Divinity degrees honoris causa ro Rabbinical Assembly members who have been "in the field" for at least twenty-five years, and I, among others, was privileged to be awarded such a degree yesterday. 

Among my colleagues, the joke was that the DD stands for "didn't die," and we were being recognized for our longevity in a notoriously taxing profession.  Like others, I'm sure, I was prepared to be underwhelmed by the event.  But, I am obliged to admit, I found it extraordinarily touching.

As I move well into my twenty-seventh year in the pulpit, I find that one of the not-so-wonderful long-term effects of my work is that it's gotten progressively harder for me to feel appreciated and understood. 

Don't get me wrong. I am blessed with congregants and friends who are wonderfully reinforcing and supportive.  In no way do I lack for people who say the most wonderful things to me about my work. 

But after so long in the rabbinate, I find that, while criticism still stings, praise all too easily rolls off my back.  That which I and most rabbis tend to crave the most- a deeper understanding of the nature of our work, and what it takes to be the strong one for so many who are hurting- is the most elusive.  It's taken me a long time to reach this insight about myself and my work, and it's not something I'm particularly happy about.

A friend and colleague who spoke yesterday representing all of us somehow managed to penetrate that inner core of need, most probably because he feels it too, as do all of us who are long-term rabbis.  He spoke of what it means to be the person to whom everyone turns in their worst moments, to be on 24/7, to live constantly with the knowledge that, particularly in this age of cellphones and dataphones, you're never really away or "off," no matter where you are. 

I listened to him express his appreciation for the honor bestowed by the Seminary on all of us, and I realized- I felt truly honored in a way that only a colleague who "gets it" could make me feel.  And I have to say that it felt awfully good…

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Being a Rabbi in the Real World /  Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik

It says in my byline that I “teach at JTS.”  That’s true, but it doesn’t say that what I teach is the required Senior Seminar in Leadership and Professional Skills for all graduating rabbinical and cantorial students.  The seminar meets for two hours twice a week, fall and spring- a serious investment of time.  People are always asking me what is involved in this seminar, and I usually answer by saying “the things that I would want a rabbi/cantor to know at least a little about before he/she is let loose on the Jewish community.”

 In addition to sessions devoted to leadership styles and understanding the nature of rabbinic power, and opportunities for the students themselves to determine at least some of the agenda and address the anxieties they are feeling as they are about to graduate, we also look (time permitting!) at an eclectic array of issues including substance abuse, domestic violence, the structure of contemporary spiritual communities, social action, interfaith relations (and interfaith families), grief and grief management, and a very wide-ranging category which we refer to in shorthand as “boundary issues.” You get the idea.  It’s a course in the real world.

The revelations of the past few years about sexual improprieties in the Catholic Church, particularly as they relate to pedophilia, are tragic enough standing on their own.

But the issue of impropriety is not just about gay priests and pedophilia.  More broadly, it’s about the enormous transferential power wielded by clergy of all faiths, and the terrifying ease with which is can be abused. All clergy have to deal with boundaries. 

I tell my students that I have yet to meet a congregation looking to hire a rabbi that isn’t interested is a “young, charismatic person who can capture the attention and imagination of all age groups in the synagogue.”  Fair enough, if ageist.

But the flip side of charm and charisma is the ever-present danger of flirting (and I use the word advisedly) with those slippery lines of authority and power, and allowing the office and title to desecrate Gods name instead of sanctify it.  Rabbis teach and counsel teens craving attention and affection, and adults of all ages who may, in their own ways, be experiencing the exact same cravings. 

These days, there are real and difficult boundary questions to be addressed: do you leave your office door open or closed when you do counseling?  Do you casually kiss people (either sex) at Kiddush?  Do you think it’s OK to “give a hug” to a kid on crisis, or a woman going through a divorce?   What are appropriate venues for counseling sessions? I could easily rattle off five or ten more such questions without any effort whatsoever.

The rabbinate isn’t only about Halacha these days….

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When you have to deliver a sermon every week, in order to survive the unrelenting pressure of coming up with fresh, relevant and well-presented topics, you become a keen listener and observer.  Ideas present themselves in the most unexpected places.  The trick is to be open to hearing and seeing them.

When last I wrote, I was looking for a framework for addressing the recent summit in Annapolis between Israel and the Palestinians.  I’m always reluctant to speak to issues like that without grounding them in some way in Torah.  If I fail to do that, I feel like I’m betraying the authority that gives me the right to be speaking from the pulpit altogether, and I become just another talking head, of which there are more than enough.  So…

This past Friday morning, I had the pleasure of being an invited guest to our wonderful Nursery School’s weekly Shabbat celebration.  Every week, there is a Shabbat Abba and Ema (mother and father) for each class, and in addition to being guests in the class, they also attend the group celebration of Shabbat in our sanctuary.  I can’t get there every week- Fridays are invariably frantic days, especially at this time of year when the days are so short- but our school’s director makes sure that, at the very least before holidays, I check in with the kids and talk to them a bit about what’s coming up in the Jewish calendar.

Since Chanukkah begins in just a few days, this Friday was the right time for a pre-holiday visit, and I was excited.  In fact, I had decided that, after more than two years of guitar lessons, I was ready to play and sing with the children, something I had always dreamed of being able to do.  I never saw myself- and still don’t- as the classic caricature of the guitar-playing rabbi whose guitar is part of everything he does.  Too new-age for me, I must admit.  

But particularly with very young children, it seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to use this new skill.  So I reviewed a few Chanukkah songs, and went off to do my thing.

Because it was my first time playing for them, I explained that this was something new for me, and I hoped that it might teach them that even people like their parents, and older than their parents, are capable of learning new things.   Simple enough, yes?  Well, one of the guest families had brought along an older sibling- maybe seven or eight, I would guess- who immediately raised his hand and asked “Is this what they mean when they say that an old dog can learn new tricks?”   The question made me feel just a little like a big old basset hound with droopy ears- not the feeling I was looking for, per se- but it was such a precious moment!

And then later, when I was back in my office, I started thinking…. Old dogs, new tricks.  I’d always wondered how Jacob, who suffered so from his parents having played favorites with him and his brother Esau, could turn around and do something very similar with Joseph, with predictably disastrous results.  Are learned behaviors necessarily destiny?  Can you teach an old dog new tricks?  And I thought further still… Are Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen (and, more importantly, the constituencies they represent) able to learn new ways to relate to each other, or are they too stuck in learned patterns of behavior, incapable of learning and teaching “new tricks?”