Culture

The Audacity of Our Ancestors

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Chutzpa. That’s the word that described all three ancestral change-makers whose stories were told at “Reclaiming Jewish Activism,” a panel discussion held at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav last Thursday, May 24th, that brought together three Jewish activists, including me, to speak about our ancestors who inspire us to action. But while our ancestors had chutzpa – as in, they were audacious, and had the nerve to speak up for justice – the original event host’s withdrawal of its invitation to hold the panel illustrated the negative chutzpah in our own Jewish community: the audacity to silence dissent and meaningful dialogue. Speaking to a packed audience at Sha’ar Zahav, the three of us panelists brought our ancestors into the room through presentations of anecdotes, pictures and chronological narratives. Author and Jeremiah Fellow Julie Gilgoff wove her own family history into that of Red Diaper babies who witnessed their parents’ persecution during the McCarthy era.

Judaism

Shavuot: Sweet Dreams

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The holiday of Shavuot is distinct among the major festivals of Jewish life in that it has no obvious distinctive ritual elements. Whereas Pesach has its seder and marror, and Sukkot has its, well, sukkot, Shavuot is not given any particular unique commandments, not in its Biblical textual source, nor in the halachic sources. In the Rabbinic texts, however, this holiday was considered to be related to the date of the giving of the Torah at Sinai (although even that is somewhat problematic; the Talmud calculates the actual event as being the day after Shavuot). Given that the holiday was felt to reflect the giving of the Torah, it became customary in many communities to study Torah all night and then read the text relating to Sinai in the morning service at dawn. The source for this is found in the Midrash (Shir hashirim Rabba 1:57 and Pirkei D’Rav Elazar 40), where it explains that the night prior to Sinai was short, and sleep was sweet, so the people of Israel slept that whole night.

Judaism

Weekly Torah Commentary: Perashat Behukotai- Walk This Way

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Here we are, at the close of the book of Vayikra, “Leviticus”, the Book of Holiness, concerned primarily with what was intended to be the highest service, that of the Temple, the sacrifices, and the priesthood. However, as the Bet Yaakov points out, this Torah portion does not begin as do most of the others, with a speech act to Moshe, that is, with the usual “And God spoke to Moshe”. Here, the segment begins with Im behklotai tailaichu, “if only you would walk in My ways and keep My commandments and make them happen”. This “if only” is read by the Bet Yaakov as describing not a command, but a prayer on God’s part. It is not a command that is needed after the presentation of so much holiness, for a command can not actualize holiness; what is needed to make holiness happen is a personal prayer.

Judaism

Tikkun Torah Commentary: Perashat Emor- The Priest Within

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Nietzche was preoccupied with the question of where the “good” came from, and who was responsible for it, that is, what is its “genealogy”. Here is his summary statement on the matter:
The judgement “good” did not originate with those to whom “goodness” was shown! Rather it was “the good” themselves , that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good, that is, of the first rank, in contradistinction to all the low, low-minded, common and plebian. It was out of this pathos of nobility and distance, as aforesaid, the protracted and domineering fundamental total feeling on the part of a higher ruling order in relation to a lower order, to a “below”- that is the origin of the antithesis “good” and “bad”‘ (The Genealogy of Morals, Kauffman edition pp 25-26). Thus, to Nietzche, those who have power are those who create morals for a society.

Judaism

Lag B’Omer & Vegetarianism: Making Every Day Count

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Lag B’Omer is considered a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but even a minor holiday is still a holiday and therefore worth celebrating. A great way to celebrate Lag B’Omer is through vegetarianism, as Lag B’Omer is deeply connected to vegetarianism.

Judaism

Weekly Torah Commentary – Aharei Mot-Kedoshim – 2 essays, Fire & Fragmentation, The Situation of Holiness

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I. Perashat Aharei Mot- Fire and Fragmentation:
In the opening of this week’s perasha known as Aharei Mot (“after the death of”), we are once again reminded of the death of the two older sons of Aharon, who died, as was narrated in Perashat Shemini, while bringing a ‘foreign flame before Gd, of which they were not commanded’. Here, where the central concern is with the Day of Atonement rites, a prologue is provided, narrating how Gd spoke to Moshe after the tragic incident, followed by the cautionary command to Aharon regarding the proper way to approach the holiest part of the sanctuary. What I intend to do in the course of this piece is detail the changes in orientation towards the Nadav and Avihu texts, how there is a change in reading from that of a cautionary and harsh tale of sin and its punishment to an entirely different reading, which regards the episode of the sons of Aaron as one of heroic but premature spiritual achievement. The text tells us, in Vayiqra 10:1, that during the overall celebration of the initiation of the Mishkan, after the people were overcome by the visible appearance of the Divine Presence at the Tent of Meeting, the sons of Aharon, Nadav and Avihu spontaneously took censers, added fire and incense, and offered them before Gd, despite not having received a command to do so.

Inter-Culturalism

Weekly Torah Commentary: Perashiyot Tazria Metzora- Holiness as a Surface

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Michel Foucault, in his ‘Discourse on Language’ states:
I am supposing that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers? Foucault identifies a number of excluded areas of discourse found in contemporary society, such as sexual speech, or speech not residing within the truth values of currently accepted paradigms of science. This week we will see how the textual commentators identify and characterize a more fundamental type of problematic speech, the pathology it evokes, and steps that can be taken towards prevention and healing. I. Marked and Marketing:
Our textual portion begins:
‘This is the Torah of the Metzora, the tzara’t patient on the day of his purification; he shall be brought to the Kohen’
The Midrash initiates its investigation of this verse with an oft quoted word play, where the unusual word ‘metzora’  (commonly translated as leper, though it is clear that is not the affliction described here) is viewed as an acronym for ‘motzi shem ra’, gossip or slander. The anecdote used in the Talmud regarding the motzi shem ra, the malignant gossip, is that of an itinerant peddler, a ‘rochel’, who like the snake oil peddlers of the nineteenth century, wandered among the towns around Zippori, proclaiming ‘who would like to buy the life elixir’?.

Culture

A Letter to Anne Frank on Holocaust Remembrance Day

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“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.” – Anne Frank
Dear Anne,
What would you make of it all? What would you think of what has become of the world? What would you feel about how we still behave? Would you be surprised at what has happened to the Jewish people since your death and how the Jewish story is unfolding in the 21st century?

Inter-Culturalism

Torah Commentary: Perashat Shemini — Food: Incorporation and Inclusion

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Foucault prefaces his book, The Order of Things, with a passage from Borges that leads him to the very same question which motivates this week’s essay on the classification of permissible and forbidden foods:
…This passage quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopedia’ in which it is written that …animals are divided into (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies’. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that’is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that… In this week’s perasha we encounter a taxonomy of “our own”, the classification of the animals permitted to us for kosher consumption, and those forbidden to us. A set of lists, with a unique set of inclusionary and exclusionary criterion. It would perhaps be desirable to fully enunciate an “archaeology” of how Jewish thought looked at the concept of taxonomy; my preliminary analysis here I hope will be instructive and leads to some surprising unexpected ideas about overcoming differences between peoples in a great striving for spiritual ascent.

art

Sacred Snapshots Brings a Justice-Seeking Connection to the Holy

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On Saturday, April 21, Sacred Snapshots, a day-long Sampler for the Spirit, will invite participants to experience the divine, celebrate spiritual practices from a range of religions and traditions at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California (9 a.m. to 6 p.m.) Whether exploring religion in pop culture, engaging 12-step spirituality, or experiencing Hindu ritual, attendees will create a multi-religious, multicultural and international community for one day. Rumi wrote that “there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” and at Sacred Snapshots, you will have the chance to try at least a dozen. When I heard about Saturday’s event, I was curious if Sacred Snapshots could deliver a hospitable space for those who belong to a congregation and those who do not to come together and experiment in spiritual practices new to both of them. After talking with the event organizers and looking at the web site, I realized the diversity of the presenters and traditions appearing in the Sacred Snapshots line-up provided an opportunity to dabble in something I have heard of or experience something I never knew existed from a location or community with which I’ve never had contact. There is so much to explore and to taste (and I do mean taste – there is a Flavors of Faith workshop that delves into the relationship between food and religious life.)
Curious?