Judaism

Weekly Sermon: BE GENERATIONOUS

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Very OFTEN, dear friends, have we told here the tale of Israel’s sorrow at the breaking of her city walls, the smashing of her temple, the forced marching out to exile of her nobles, her leaders, her men of law and letters, and all their families. Of how in a city far away they despaired of help from their God, how some defected to other gods, how some abandoned hope, and some heard a new song, to whose strains we listened again just now. Thus says the Lord, Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. For behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth.

Judaism

Torah Commentary: Perashat Vayera- The Non-Sacrifice of Isaac

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I don’t think I need to retell the story of the akedah, the “sacrifice of Isaac” by his father Abraham, following the word of God, I find it emotionally difficult to retell the tale in a literal manner. I do think the entire episode demands a dramatic reevaluation. I suppose, if I wanted to put my problem with this passage in an inflammatory manner, I could ask, what kind of God is it that puts any person through this kind of “test”, and what kind of man is Abraham if he chooses to follow such a command? Eli Wiesel tells the story of a woman at the gates of Auschwitz (a story borrowed and corrupted in Sophie’s Choice) who is asked to choose which of her two children will be sent to the crematorium, her immediate response is a howling, shrieking insanity; her tormentors shot her on the spot. No human being can or should ever be put through what may be the cruelest form of torture, the loss of a child, certainly not by a compassionate God.

Earth-based Religions

Did the Flood Actually Happen?

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When it comes to the Bible, most spiritual progressives are not literalists – particularly when it comes to the seemingly nursery rhyme stories of Bereishit, the Book of Genesis. If we place any credence at all in the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Babel and the Flood, it is likely through the Joseph Campbell-inspired lens of a mythologized history that reflects our inner genealogy as much as it does external or historical fact. But what if the story of Noah and the Flood, as caricaturized and smoothed over as it may be (the ants come marching two by two…), were a preserved fragment of real historical experience?

Judaism

Torah Commentary: Bereishit- Being and Prayer

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…the Word is the Word,
the Word shows the extent of our
Verbal incapacity,
Cut off from reality,
The sound of these words serving us deceptively. Yet the value of imagery,
What we put into these words… Antonin Artaud
The message of the opening passages of the Torah is a message about being. As Rashi points out with his very first comment, the narration of the creation is meant to teach us not basic lessons in science and cosmology, but rather something about our being in the world. As this question of “Being” is so fundamental an aspect of contemporary discourse, it is worth addressing, right at the Beginning.

art

Movie Depicts Sweetness of Simple Faith

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It’s Sukkot, the seven or eight-day autumn holiday (depending upon how you classify Simchat Torah) in which religious people eat their meals in a loosely constructed booth (a sukkah) gaily decorated with plant materials. “Ushpizin” is a charming seriocomic Israeli drama, made in 2004, depicting a particularly tempestuous Sukkot in the lives of a Hasidic couple in modern-day Jerusalem. Liberal Jews have strong feelings about the limited cultural vistas and the unhealthy political influences that we see on Israeli policies from this quarter–more perhaps in the intrusion of religion into the affairs of state and civil life than on attitudes toward peace-making, where the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) are often confused with the national-religious camp. But this film reminds us of the positive spiritual dimension to the Haredi lifestyle. Dramatic changes of fortune are seen as divine intervention, an answer to their devotion and a part of their ongoing dialogue with God.

Judaism

1. A Brief Meditation- Between Yom Kippur and Sukkot 2. The Social Space of the Sukka

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A line in Neila caught my attention at the end of Yom Kippur. It reads:
“our remains will be naught but dust, thus God has given us many prayers”. Recognizing the emptiness of the confrontation with that void, that abyss of non-existence, we are given the chance to utter words which suggest a meaning for existence, prayers for life, for the existing world and the people which inhabit it. We know we are alive because we can still pray, still dream of beautiful things. This brought to mind R. Pinchas of Koretz’s line, that it is our swaying during prayers which cause the winds to blow (the winds which then cause the grass to grow).

Judaism

Swimming The Ocean of Night: Welcoming the Fall Season

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We are entering the time of dreaming, of storytelling, of playing with the landscapes of the imagination, the fabric of our own subconscious. As we harvest the bounty of the summer growth, we each have our own personal harvests to gather in, internally pulling on the threads of our own being, reflecting on memories from the season that has just finished. The gates are open for all memories, and it is usually the ones we try to push away which will arrive the loudest. It is in the darkness of night where we meet our own reflection, our own shadow.

Judaism

Yom Kippur: Time and Teshuva – A Place for Healing

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I. Time and Teshuva
In the shiur regarding Rosh Hashana, we saw how the shofar connected us to a moment outside of time. This radicalization of the perception of time bears an even more immediate relationship to the concept of Yom Kippur and its central component, Teshuva, repentance, as the word teshuva is roughly translated. We will argue that Teshuva means a whole lot more, a restructuring of one’s narrative, an ability to step outside the linearity of experience in order to set things right in one’s life and in the world. The un-linkage of our normal perception of the flow of time to the Yom Kippur experience is present in the original verse describing the day, as summarized in BT Pesahim 68:
Mar son of Ravina would fast on all the days of the year except for Purim, Shavuout, and the eve of Yom Kippur (the ninth of Tishrei, as opposed to the tenth, which is Yom Kippur), since it says (Vayikra 23:32) “v’initem et nafshotayhem batisha’ lahodesh”- “and you shall deprive yourselves on the ninth of the month”- Is the fast actually on the ninth?

Judaism

Was Prophet Isaiah a Yiddishe Mama?

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During text study at one of our meetings of OS JUSTICE, the social justice committee I chair at Or Shalom Jewish Community in San Francisco, we discovered some secret verses of a not-so-minor prophet named Yiddishe Mama Isaiah. I’d like to share a little bit of it from chapter 58.

Inter-Culturalism

Blaming the Jews: Old Wine in a New Bottle

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In allowing themselves to be duped by a convicted con artist with a grudge against the Muslim world, the Journal and the AP have, through their own carelessness, played into stereotypes of wealthy Jews conspiring to subvert the institutions of the world — in this case the religion of Islam — in their age-old pursuit of global hegemony. And the spread of the violence and unrest throughout the Middle East in response to a bizarrely ham-handed video clip is more proof than anyone needs of the destructive potential of such stereotypes in today’s interconnected world.