Monday, January 24, 2011

This Week's Torah Portion: Roe v. Wade 38th Anniversary and Mishpatim

     It is always amazing to me how the weekly-scheduled Torah portion always has something terribly insightful and timely to say about the most important events of the week.
     TODAY is no different as we mark both the 38th anniversary of the decision of Roe v. Wade, which protects a woman's right to choose in most abortion cases, and the reading of the sixth Torah portion in the Book of Exodus, called Mishpatim.
     For those newly-elected to the House of Represenatives who have vowed, on religious grounds, to roll back Roe v. Wade, recommend them to Exodus 21:22-23:
     When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman's husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on the reckoning.
     The passsage is fundamental in the abortion debate because if the Bible considered the fetus to be a full person with full rights, then a monetary fine would have been impossible.  Rather, the person who caused the pregnant woman to miscarry would be guilty of murder.  The stress on the fine as the appropriate compensation for this deed underscores the fact that while inside the mother, the fetus is a part of the mother, just as the leg, arm or eyes if insured, would also be part of the mother.  Those that argue that the fetus is an independent being with full rights which supercede those of the mother, cannot use the Bible for support.
      That is NOT to say that Judaism does not value the potential of the fetus to become a full person.  But in couseling a pregnant mother who is considering aborting the fetus, the rabbi would consider the total health of the mother, both physical as well as psychological, in bringing the fetus to term.  Because Protestant ministers and Catholic priests could see this same issue with completely different theological lenses, it incumbant upon members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate NOT to impose their own theological views on this issue.  On this issue, the "will of the people" as referenced in today's heated news clips must not be with the November 2010 election results but rather with the U.S. Constitution, which in the First Ammendment, forbids the establishment of one religion over another.  Best to leave abortion decisions with the theologians to decide with their congregants, on a case-by-case basis, within churches, synagogues and mosques, not with the politicans on Capitol Hill.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

US Senator Chris Coons Pays a Visit

Only in Delaware would your brand-new United States Senator decide he wanted to attend your Confirmation Class.  The topic was Israel Advocacy.  The intended speaker was Hailey Soiffer, Foreign Policy Advisor to Sen. Ted Kauffman and now Senator Chris Coons.  She spoke.  She was amazing.  Turns out her Hebrew name is Channa and she first became politically active when she was only seven, picketing in front of the Soviet Embassy with her dad.  They held up signs to then-Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, saying "Let My People Go!" (It worked).

But imagine the impact when Sen. Coons turned to teens from Congregation Beth Shalom, Congregation Beth Emeth and Adas Kodesh Shel Emeth and said, "the most moving thing my roommate said to me in my freshman year of college was "if there was a war,  I would be willing to die for Israel."  It was during the First Gulf War, and Israel was the target of Sadam Hussein's missiles.  As Sen. Coons learned more about his roommate, he discovered that his family were survivors of the Holocaust and that helped shaped his thinking on Israel.  This encounter also helped shape Sen. Coon's thinking about Israel (and that of course was the point).

Senator Coons implored the teens to appreciate their Confirmation education experiences and to learn as much about Israel as possible so that like the Senator's freshman roommate, our Delaware Jewish teens would also be able to tell Israel's story to their friends in high school and college.  He also told the teens how important that they be able to "bear witness" to the Holocaust, in order to make sure that it never happens again.  Sen. Coons made this plea on the date that Southern Sudan, the place most recently plagued by the horror of genocide in Darfur, was voting to become an independent country.  Senator Coons words were empowering and motivating.

On a very personal note, it was extremely gratifying working with Delaware rabbis from Adas Kodesh Shel Emeth and Beth Emeth to bring teens from Orthodox, Reform and Conservative backgrounds for shared learning under one roof.  I find this level of cooperation between colleagues to be exciting, path-breaking, and ripe with opportunities which will benefit the entire Jewish Delaware community.  Although Reconstructionist Temple Beth El was not a part of this program, my almost weekly, always enjoyable Hockessin coffee get-togethers with Rabbi Micah Becker-Klein ensure that next year all four movements will be bringing our teens together for group learning  And long before that, we will be gathering in two weeks at Temple Beth El on Friday night to share Shabbat dinner and worship services as a united community, celebrating our Jewish Federation of Delaware.

I am curently writing to you from the Rabbinical Training Institute outside of Baltimore, MD, where Conservative rabbis of all ages and backgrounds are in a five-day retreat with one another, exploring topics as diverse as Radical Judaism with Art Green and JTS Chancellor Arnie Eisen, to Jewish Relations with the Christian and Moslem World, with a special emphasis on JTS-pathbreaking outreach to Moslem and Christian Leadership in the Catholic and Protestant communities, with Rabbi Burt Visotsky.  I will be back in Wilmington Thursday night, just in time for my Confirmation Class at 6:30 pm and to prepare for a funeral......the life of the rabbi in a nutshell.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Power of Prayer -- Debbie Friedman singer/songwriter needs us

I received an email alert from my cantorial friend, Michael Horwitz, regarding the life-threatening condition of liberal Jewish singer and songwriter Debbie Friedman just before Shabbat.  I met Debbie when I first began my rabbinical studies 20 years ago (how can I possible BE that old?)  I was attending a summer Wexler Family Education Program at what was then called the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.  Debbie was giving a concert for the students on the program.  I remember a poor shlump in the audience missed the request not to take flash photos.  He did and Debbie went down as if she had been hit by a taser.  Up popped fellow singer/songwriter Craig Taubman who played while Debbie pulled herself together.  When she came back up, she and Craig sang a duet, and then Debbie continued on.

I continued my rabbinical studies in Jerusalem and when I entered year three of my studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, I found Debbie was my new almost next-door neighbor, living adjacent to Anshe Chesed Synagogue, on the Upper West Side.  Debbie would hold these wonderful monthly healing services in the jam-packed chapel of Anshe Chesed.  My wife, Elissa, and I would regularly attend -- not that we needed specific healing, rather life in Manhattan requires spiritual healing for anyone who lives on that congested island.  In addition Debbie hosted Refaeinu Conferences, with the hope of spreading Healing Services to synagogues throughout America.

When I came to my first pulpit, B'nai Tikvah Congregation in Los Angeles, I began guitar-led Healing Services almost immediately (using the excellent Women's League for Conservative Judaism Healing Service booklets), and of course incorporated Debbie's Misheberach healing prayer into every Shabbat service. During my tenure as rabbi, Debbie also came to LA and did a fundraiser for our synagogue, as well as Mishkon Tephila in Venice and Adat Shalom in West LA.  She was gracious and a crowd pleaser.

Now, 20 years after my first Debbie Freidman encounter, I am in Wilmington, Delaware, and I have introduced her Healing Services at our Delaware-based Jewish Family Services Healing Center and her Misheberach prayer is a standard for our Morning Minyan, Hebrew School prayer services as well as weekly Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Shalom.

At 9:12 p.m. this Saturday evening, our Wilmington gathering of Albert Einstein Academy staff, Board Members and parents joined with our friends across the country in singing Debbie's Misheberach prayer, and directing our prayers and music to her hospital room in my hometown of Orange County, California.  We hope our prayers help bring her out of her medically-induced coma and allow her lungs to heal, for her to breath on her own, the breath, the neshima that fuels her neshama, her soul, which has allowed us all to sing in harmony together, across the movements of Judaism, and across the country.  Debbie has been a great unifer, and even if our prayers do not get us our much-hoped-for results of a healthy Debbie Friedman, they have already achieved the power of once again unifying American Jewry the way her music has for decades.

May her music always be for a blessing.
And let us say amen.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Torah Portion: Parashat Bo

Barukh ata Adonai Eloheynu melech ha olam,
sh'cheyanu, v'kimanu, v'higianu lazman hazeh.

This is the prayer for new beginnings.  I have never written a blog before but I do not want to get left behind as we move into the teens, although I am not sure what to call the years between 2011 - 2019, as there is no "teen" that goes after the numbers 11 or 12.  But I definitely do not wish to be left behind.

So for the most part I hope to use this blog to ruminate about the Torah portion of the week, which is called "Bo," from early on in the Book of Exodus.  The material covers the last three of the ten plagues visited God on Pharaoh and the Egyptians: locust, darkness and death of the first born, moves on to the establishement of the first Passover seder, and concludes with laws regarding the redemption of the first born child.

I am most concerned with the affect on the meaning of the plagues and the suffering of innocents.  The rabbinic tradition holds that the Egyptians were not so innocent, in the same way that the German people living in the years 1933 - 1945, were no innocent either. The idea is that neither Hitler living almost 80 years ago, nor Pharaoh, living almost 3200 years ago, could not have achieved their destructive goals without the cooperation of ordinary people.  In this vein, the rabbis understood each of the plagues by the Hebrew phrase, middah k'neged middah -- one good turn deserves another, or perhaps, one goes around, comes around, e.g. just as the Egyptians darkened the lives of the Israelite slaves, so too did God make the lives of the Egyptians with three days of tangible darkness. 

If we apply this idea, middah k'neged middah    to our own lives, it is most empowering.  The idea is that we can shape our own destinies, how people will react to ourselves by adjusting our own behavior.  In scientific terms, for every action there is an equal reaction.  And if you do not like the reaction then adjust the initial action.

This is the basis of Jewish thought: we are responsible for our own behavior, there is no one to blame but ourselves, and within ourselves, with God's help of course, we have the power to be better than who we at the moment.

Shabbat shalom!