To the Idol Smashers

Here is a poem inspired by the recent wave of removing Confederate and Colonial statues. It is also inspired by Genesis Rabbah 38 and Psalm 115.  This is a new means of expression for me. (If you have been following along you know that I am fond of the rant, the op-ed, and the occasional sermon or exegesis). So, your honest feedback on this is welcome.

To the Idol Smashers
(inspired by Black Lives Matter, Genesis Rabbah 38 and Psalm 115)

Demolish the Confederate statues
Like they smashed the stone Hitlers and iron Stalins,
Tear down Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold
callous authors of so many deaths.
Swing the axes, pound the hammers
and pull the ropes.

Then
amid the sudden quiet,
the ruble and the dust,
ask about statues.

What single human is worthy of being a sacred image
the instantiated entwining of triumph and loss
that consecrates a public space
where we behold
and gather
and cry together
and mourn quietly alone
and when the wounds are less raw,
where we picnic,
gaze up and dream?

What hero of today will not tarnish in the slow, harsh rain of history?
Do we need new idols made by human hands?

Let the giant bronze horse in the park arch its freshly bared back.
Let it remain riderless.

The true memorial of F.D.R. is not his polished likeness by the fireside.
It is five hungry men lining up for bread.

Let us build monuments
to all the soldiers, not a lone general
to all the lunch counter sitters and bus riders, not one holy man
to the Chinese men who built our railroads, not the robber-baron who exploited them.

The statues of
nameless Liberty
The Unknown Soldier,
Dachu’s Defiant Inmate,
two women together and two men together openly in a park,
the spirit talker whispering into his radio,
Edwardian ladies with banners in handcuffs,
peacekeepers with heavy packs,
six men raising a flag,
and students on bicycles facing tanks

are holy

not because we must crane our necks to gaze upon them,
but because their stone eyes meet ours directly
and with carved arms they beckon us
to come and take our place amongst them.

Indigenous Land Acknowledgement: A Jewish Version

In Canada, as part of a path of Reconciliation with the First Nations people for the harm caused to them, many gatherings open with an acknowledgement that the land where we are holding our meeting, synagogue service or conference on belonged to First Nations people. Here is a version I wrote (see notes for full attributions of component parts) that evokes Jewish intention, Jewish texts and speaks to our experience as both an oppressed people and a people who currently benefit from the effects of colonialism in our country. 

I will be using it at my seder this year.

Let me know what you think.

 

The Acknowledgement can be downloaded as a pdf here:

Land acknowledgement

Full text is available at :

Open Siddur Project -Land Acknowledgement

Strange Thought: A new take on Loving the Stranger

Crossposted at Jewschool and Reconstructing Judaism

When newspaper style guides started adopting “they” and “their” as singular, gender-neutral pronouns a friend told me, “I get why this should be done. It is the right thing to do. But it is going to be really hard for me to switch. It is not going to just roll off my tongue.” His words reminded me of someone who was on a rabbi search committee who was interviewing a female rabbis for the first time who confided, “I know I should give these women a fair shake, but it is not how I grew up. When I close my eyes and picture a rabbi, I see a beard and hear a man’s voice. If I do this I will be going against my gut feeling and not just now but for years when I will see them on the bimah”. Both these people made a significant effort to adjust their own thoughts and words and what go against what felt “natural”, to do what was difficult and unfamiliar because they wanted to bring forward a more just world.

During the Passover season we hear a lot about the biblical verses commanding us to love the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt (Leviticus 19:33-3 and Deuteronomy 10:18-19). These verses have been used for generations to underline our Jewish obligation to care for the oppressed and marginalized and to advocate for refugees and immigrants.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks discusses how these verses refers not only to our actions but to our words, thoughts and emotions. He writes that God wants us to “fight the hatred in our hearts, “as our inclination at first is not to love the stranger, but to fear or hate them”.

Extending this metaphorical reading of these verses suggests that it is not just “strange” people that we need to accept despite our prejudices, but to create positive change we need to embrace unfamiliar ideas and habits of mind. For justice to proceed, we must allow in thoughts that are unfamiliar and ways of talking and acting that at first seem strange to us.

The ethicist Moses Pava writes that the commandment to love the stranger “challenges the very notion of a static and unchanging community” because it asks us to continually broaden our notion of community, which also forces us to “to transcend our current conceptions of who ‘we’ are.” He observes that to love the stranger we must transgress the status quo. Since the commandment is one that we are always obliged to do, it means we cannot allow ourselves to be comfortable once we have alleviated one form of oppression, but once comfortable with our new reality, push ourselves through uncomfortable ways yet again.

Just as every year the haggadah tells us we must see ourselves as if we personally left Egypt and were personally redeemed from oppression, so every year we must push ourselves out of our comfort zones and try to embrace new and “strange” habits of mind and thoughts. We cannot rely on what was once difficult and brave for us but is now part of our regular internal conversation or behaviour.

It is not enough to have stood with civil rights protests fifty years ago if your community is not supporting Black Lives Matter today. If thirty years ago you began including the matriarchs in your prayers, it may be time to stretch to something like female God language, which might make you feel as uncomfortable now as you did then. If twenty years ago you instituted having men involved in clearing up and washing the seder dishes, it is time to examine the cleaning, shopping, cooking and meal-planning. If you once championed inclusion at your JCC by having ramps and accessible washrooms, it is time to turn your eye to access to programming. Loving the stranger means stretching to new and previously uncomfortable places. For the child of the stranger becomes a native-born and the strange new words that we stumble through with brave intention but slower speech flow easily off the tongues of our children.

Religious rights don’t justify discrimination

My Canadian Take on the “Can’t Sit next to Women on a Plane” Issue.

From the Toronto Star

What has been a recurring problem in the U.S. has now reached Canada.

In the U.S. Orthodox Jewish men have caused numerous delays and turmoil on flights by insisting women switch seats so the men can avoid sitting next to them. On a recent Porter flight from New Jersey to Toronto, a woman was asked by an airline attendant to switch seats to accommodate an Orthodox Jewish man who did not want to sit next to her for religious reasons but did not ask her directly.

The men in these cases present their cause as a simple request (or a demand) for religious accommodation. The women who are asked or pressured by the men and sometimes by airline attendants to move see the situation as discrimination based on sex and feel their rights are violated. Both religious accommodation and freedom from discrimination based on sex are integral values that define our view of ourselves as a nation.

As an observant Jew, I see the importance of accommodation. As a feminist, I cannot abide someone regarding gender as a reason to reject a seatmate on a plane. How can these seemingly conflicting values be resolved?

Read the rest here

The Othering of Tzedaka in Jewish Education

Crossposted at EJewishPhilanthropy

PENNY IN THE PUSHKA
Penny in the pushka,
Penny in the pot,
We give tzedakah right before Shabbat.
Counting all the pennies, nickels, quarters, too
It’s fun to help each other,
It’s what we ought to do.
One for the family without enough to eat,
One for the poor folks that live down the street,
One for the little girl who learns in special ways,
And one for Israel and that is why we say…..

This is a song that countless children learn at Jewish day school and Hebrew school. On the face of it, the song reinforces the important mitzvah of giving tzedakah. However, something about the song always bothered me. At first I thought it was because it emphasized giving money as the sole method of giving Tzedakah, which in many senses is the easiest. Money does not force us to interact with a person in need who may be different from us; it does not force us to see difficult situations or real suffering in person.

In the past decades Jewish educators have made great strides in transforming Tzedakah and Tikun Olam from sterile money-collecting enterprises to deep, experiential learning and giving. In eye-opening programs children have given food and clothing had conversations with homeless people, served dinners in shelters, performed at nursing homes, cleaned parks, built homes and visited the sick.

As commendable and necessary as these changes are, I feel we are compelled to go farther. The problem with the song is that the ones we are helping are always framed as “the other,” (even if it is not the case in reality). We, the singers of the song, the teachers, the students in the class, are the “Givers,” who help the poor, those with special needs or those who do not have enough to eat. The idea that the children in our schools, or their families or neighbours may be those who are poor, who may not have enough to eat, who have complex needs or mental illness is never brought up in the context of Tzedakah in the classroom. If this were in fact true of the school population we would have a big problem in our community in that Jewish education would be only available to those who never struggled with these issues. (And it is a problem in that it is less available to those who do struggle). Jewish schools do have students who fit in to these categories and do have students who don’t lack for food but do require tuition subsidies and do have complex needs or have family members who do. By presenting those students as “Other,” as outside the defined “We,” who are the “Givers” but not the “Receivers,” we risk making those legitimate needs fell shameful and the receivers of help feel like that cannot speak of their experience in the communal conversation. It also risks allowing the student who sees himself or herself as a “giver” but not a “receiver” as thinking of herself or himself as being in a different group than those who do receive, and often subconsciously as being in a superior group.

While for privacy reasons we should not identify who gets a Pesach food hamper or who gets a tuition subsidy, we should acknowledge that they are among us; that they are indeed, Us.

We teach children that even those who receive tzedakah must also give tzedakah (Gittin 7b,). We need to look in the other direction as well. To borrow a phrase from another religion, we need a bit more of the sense of “but for the grace of God go I.” Students need to be reminded that we are all also recipients of the tzedakah of others: the donors of the buildings we learn in, the countless volunteer hours of those who make our shuls and schools possible, and the professionals who serve our community, making sacrifices to do so. A community is made of those who give and those who receive — and we are all both.

The Freedom Seder, radical but not Messianic

As I wrote here before, I  like to get ready for Passover by reading the original Freedom Seder which took place on April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, the third night of Passover.

Hundreds of people of varied racial and religious communities gathered in a Black church in the heart of Washington DC to celebrate the original Freedom Seder. For the first time, it [explicitly] intertwined the ancient story of liberation from Pharaoh with the story of Black America’s struggle for liberation, and the liberation of other peoples as well.

 

As radical as they were for the time, I noticed something a bit sad this time through:

How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of Mankind! For we must end the genocide [in Vietnam],* stop the bloody wars that are killing men and women as we sit here, disarm the nations of the deadly weapons that threaten to destroy us all, end the brutality with which the police beat minorities in many countries, make sure that no one starves, free the poets from their jails, educate us all to understand their poetry, allow us all to explore our inner ecstasies, and encourage and aid us to love one another and share in the human fraternity. All these! For, as is said, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken. For let all the peoples walk each one in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.”

* Insert any that is current—such as “Biafra,” “Black America,” etc.—depending on the situation.

 

With all its calls and hope for”Liberation Now! Next Year in a World of Freedom”, it still acknowledged that each year or era ahead would have its own  war crimes or genocide to talk about at the seder. So in this part of the Freedom Seder there is not exactly a vision of a utopia or Messianic future, but more along the lines of

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה

It is not your duty to complete the work. But neither are you free to desist from it.

 

Video of the seder is below:

 

 

Enjoy a young Arthur Waskcow and Rabbi Balfour Brickner and Rev. Channing Phillips. Rev. Phillips tells abortion jokes. It was filmed by the CBC. (Yes you have your 1960s era well funded Canadian public broadcaster to thank for this historic footage.)

You can get a copy of the haggadah in pdf here.

The Four Cups and the Four Freedoms

The Four Freedoms

crossposted on Open Siddur Project

The four cups can also be associated with the Four Freedoms  first articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941, which were an inspiration for were Universal Declaration of Human Rights and were incorporated into its preamble. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington DC (BanyanTree)

 

 

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in their own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want — which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. 

President Franklin Roosevelt, adapted

Getting in the mood for Pesach

My favourite way to get inspired for my seders is  watching the classic Freedom Seder  which took place on April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, the third night of Passover.

Hundreds of people of varied racial and religious communities gathered in a Black church in the heart of Washington DC to celebrate the original Freedom Seder. For the first time, it [explicitly] intertwined the ancient story of liberation from Pharaoh with the story of Black America’s struggle for liberation, and the liberation of other peoples as well.

Enjoy a young Arthur Waskcow and Rabbi Balfour Brickner and Rev. Channing Phillips. Rev. Phillips tells abortion jokes. It was filmed by the CBC. (Yes you have your 1960s era well funded Canadian public broadcaster to thank for this historic footage.)

You can get a copy of the haggadah in pdf here.

If anyone wants a copy of my current haggadah, let me know.

Ultra-Orthodox Schools Resist Mandate on Vegetables, Fearing Kosher Violation – Forward.com.

Ultra-Orthodox Schools Resist Mandate on Vegetables, Fearing Kosher Violation – Forward.com.

WASHINGTON — Getting schoolchildren to eat green vegetables is anything but easy. Getting students in ultra-Orthodox schools to eat these vegetables as part of their school lunch could soon become impossible.Representatives of ultra-Orthodox groups have been petitioning the government, in meetings and through correspondence since last October, to exempt their schools from the legal requirement to serve leafy dark green vegetables as part of a menu eligible for federal funding.Their reason has nothing to do with the taste of spinach, kale, or cabbage. It is because these and other leafy greens might be infested with tiny insects that would render them non-kosher. The groups have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find substitutes that would maintain the nutritional benefits of these vegetables without having ultra-Orthodox children risk eating food that might contradict their dietary laws.

…

Ultra-Orthodox schools took issue with two of the measures. One problem stemmed from limiting the amount of grain-based foods served at schools. Administrators noted that for the purpose of saying the blessing over the bread (HaMotzi) and the blessing on nourishment (Birkat Hamazon), students require a certain amount of bread, usually one slice. But that would take up all the grain allocation for a meal and would not allow other grain-based foods on the lunch plate.

I think our religious, halachah-following ancestors ( like 100 years ago, not in the deep past) ate leafy green vegtables without intensive checking for bugs. And they also did not bench 3 times a day every day. (Why is mezonot not good enough for lunch?)

Kosher Restaurant Revolt Brews in Jerusalem – Forward.com

A dozen eateries in the holy city are brazenly claiming kosher credentials without the state rabbinate’s say-so. They are shifting the perennial controversy over state and religion in Israel from well-worn subjects, like Orthodoxy’s monopoly over marriage and divorce, to the rights over this single word, kosher.

via Kosher Restaurant Revolt Brews in Jerusalem – Forward.com.

These behaviours:

• Limiting to a very few suppliers

The rebellion began in the summer, after a small Indian vegan restaurant in the city center, Ichikidana, objected to new limitations imposed by the local rabbinate on where it could source its produce. There have long been rumors of corruption in Israel’s kashrut establishment, and restaurant owner Lahava Silliman believed that the demand on her to patronize only a small number of suppliers was intended to give certain businesses favored by the rabbinate extra trade. “It was very transparent to me,” she said.

 

• Unregulated prices for services

Sasson claims that when he was supervised, he received from his supervisor, or mashgiac, just a half-hour visit every two or three days. Silliman said that she paid a salary of 1,200 shekels a month ($300) plus benefits, and the inspector spent about 15 minutes a week on her premises.

 

• Crossing the line between verification and assuming cheating-Looking through the garbage!!

From my hours and hours of visiting stores, monitoring stores, spying on stores, stakeouts, picking through garbage, observing mashgichim, walking the shuk [market] and other areas in the center of Jerusalem

These are not what kashrut is supposed to be about and sound like a number of other things, none of them good.