America

The Sinai Lesson

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Tonight is Shavuot (at least as I am writing). It is the holiday on which we celebrate the first fruits of the Spring harvest and the revelation at Sinai. It is one of the least observed of our holidays even though it is Biblically mandated and has an important message. It reminds us that at our core we are a people with a mission. We are a people who listened and accepted the revolutionary idea that there is meaning to our being beyond the limits of our bodies. Whatever you believe about the narrative in Exodus that recounts the Sinai experience complete with a golden calf and shattered tablets, we have accepted its truth and its commandment: that there is a higher law whether filtered through historical writings or delivered from a Divine Source right into the hands of Moses our teacher.

Some people think there is only one way to live the mission: black hats, black coats, covered hair, fidelity to ritual and halacha. I think every individual has the right to find their own way and there are many paths that lead to Sinai. When Tom O’Brien and I taught at FAU Lifelong Learning, we would end our session with a slide with an image of a path in the woods with the words: “Walker there is no road; the road is made by walking.” I don’t remember where we found it, but it has always spoken to me about how we make our way through life by living it with appreciation and purpose. Life is a gift. It might also be an accident but it’s still not to be taken lightly.

The Sinai lesson is that the paths we forge are not for our sole passage but that the generations that came before us and the generations that will come after us are depending on how we walk and where we put our feet. The Shavuot story reminds us that we all stood at Sinai; we all heard the words and accepted the obligations. We are called Israel – the one who struggles with what it means to be human or to put it in traditional language – what God wants from us. And If truth be told, we are having a hard time with it right now. How to defend ourselves and still look ourselves in the mirror, How to stand up to hatred without hating back. How to listen to the voices in our community and nation that we don’t agree with and not write them out of our circles.

You know I am speaking about Israel and her current government. You know I am speaking about the United State and our current administration. You know I am writing this to myself because this holiday we begin tonight says: We can do better.

I Was Cautiously Hopeful

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I’m not surprised; I am disappointed. I’m anxious and hopeful at the same time. I’m reticent to even write these words, after all I am living relatively securely in Florida and the things that worry me do not include missiles raining on my head from as close as Gaza and as far away as Yemen. The cease-fire news yesterday was a blessing. But even then, I feared optimism was somewhat premature.

Maybe we know too much; maybe we think what we know is really not the truth. As of this writing, Netanyahu is saying that Hamas is reneging on part of the deal and the Israeli cabinet meeting to discuss and hopefully ratify the agreement has been postponed. That was 14 minutes ago according to the Times. What will happen next is unknown to me although given President Biden’s announcement last night of the work that his administration has been constantly doing to achieve cessation of hostilities and a return of the hostages it is hard to imagine that it will fall apart again.

But there is Monday and the inauguration of President Elect Donald Trump. It so echoes Carter/Reagan and the freeing of the Americans from Iran in 1981. Who wants to give whom what? Who is afraid of whom? Is Netanyahu ready to give Trump the gift of making the deal? Is Hamas afraid of Trump’s threat to bomb the hell out of them?

Sad. Disheartening. I hope by the time you read these words, my fears, anxiety, disappointment will be something of the past and there will be a new day dawning with the hostages returning home and guns silencing as hints of a permanent peace rise out of the darkness. It’s probably going to take something the Bible would call a miracle. It’s immensely risky because the forces of evil are real in this world and everything I know says that its name is Hamas.  It’s definitely going to take courage and faith. But I am not so sure there are any other good alternatives  – so read these words as a prayer.

A prayer for peace; a silent petition to all that is good or God in the world for sanity; a petition for joy to come in the morning even though we all know it will be tinged with sadness for all those whose deaths we mourn.

Choosing to Hope

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Some of you are not going to like this but I am “unplugged” which means I am not connected to any power grid that might like to restrict what I have to say. So, I am going to tell you that I haven’t been this excited about the possibility of our national politics as I am right now. And I am willing to admit that I might be being manipulated and or naïve and or played but I like the feeling, and it is a combination of hope and joy.

There you have it. If you have been watching the Democratic Convention you know where this is all going. I am excited to vote for something once again as opposed to voting against someone. I love the enthusiasm; I love the excitement; I love the belief that this country with all its flaws and problems is an America filled with promise and filled with potential. And even if we disagree or differ in how we see tomorrow or yesterday, we are one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

I just finished rereading “When Breath Becomes Air” by Paul Kalanith. One of the sentences that stopped me was: “The word ‘hope’ first appeared in English about a thousand years ago, denoting some combination of confidence and desire.” I wonder if that means that people didn’t hope before or there was just no way to express the emotion in English. Actually, I’m not really sure what that sentence means. I don’t think people can live without hope. Or maybe I shouldn’t generalize. I can’t live without hope.

The dictionary defines hope as the expectation or belief that something expected will happen. I think you can hope that something unexpected can happen as well. Like: I hope there will be a hostage deal and Hamas and Iran will stand down and Israel can live in peace. Like: I hope that we can have a substantive discussion on the future of our country and stop the name calling and childish snipes at one’s race or name. Like: I hope that the next Congress can govern and not quibble and put our country’s interest in place of their own. Like: I hope my grandchildren’s’ America is safer, brighter, fairer, more prosperous and healthier that my own.

I happen to believe that hope and faith are interconnected. In my world to have faith is to believe that your life has purpose; it is a gift; you are here to make this world a better place, sometimes just by smiling, sometimes just be voting, sometimes just by loving. Neither faith nor hope are passive – they demand action, and they have the power to change our world.

By the way the image at the top is moss. Moss has a mind of its own, growing in really unlikely places. I like it cause it is fairly unpredictable, like hope.

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Living Between the Cracks

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As I was hiking the High Falls Loop in Dupont Forest this morning, I listened to one of my go-to podcasts about Israel. Produced by the Hartman Institute, it is called “For Heaven’s Sake” – Israel at War Day 284. The hosts were discussing what normalcy means at this time in Israel. Somewhere on the walk, they used the phrase “living between the cracks” and I thought this did not just apply to Israel. It is what we all are doing – living and making the most of what we have and who we are ignoring or skipping over the cracks in the sidewalk we call the world today.

I really don’t know where to begin – the former President who denies that he lost the election is running to become president again surviving an assassination attempt by inches; the sitting President who has a fifty-year record of public service is bowing out of the race to serve four more years and no one really knows the real story there. (Except I wouldn’t be fair or honest if I didn’t let you know that I am in awe of his willingness to let go of the reins of power and praise him for thinking of the country first. No matter what the motivation and forces that made this decision. I admire him and wish more politicians put country first. And yeah…. It wasn’t a quick or easy decision, and it did look like for a time that the trappings of power were too seductive to ever let go – but he did the right thing. And hopefully his legacy will reflect that.)

 The current Vice-President, a woman of color, seems to be on track to cement the Democratic presidential nomination. If successfully winning the presidency she will become the first woman president and it is probably about time. It’s not like all the kings’ men have been consistently effective. From my perspective, it is probably also the right time to celebrate the multi-cultural demographics of our country. From my perspective, we are not a White Christian Country. And there of course is the rub and the challenge and the pitfalls. Change is hard for us all and change is necessary – without change there is no growth.

When I came home from my hike I sat on the porch and put on my Spotify liked songs. One of them is “Try to Remember.” The lyrics are so another generation and a different world. Can you imagine someone writing a contemporary song with the line: “Try to remember when life was so tender that no one wept except the willow…”

No one wept except the willow. I weep for the callousness; I weep for the vitriol and violence; I weep for lies and I weep that it is hard to know who or whom to trust and what we call the news on one station is opinion on another. And I pray we can collectively come out of this whole – a united states – with a new face looking forward. And out of the cracks will grow a new tomorrow.

Simple Truths That Are Very Complicated

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I don’t think I have ever reposted something on this Blog. But this needs to be said and read and reread and remembered and told time and time again. The attack on Israel yesterday is not business as usual. The attempt to blame a failure of Israeli intelligence may be fair but it is premature. The explanation that Hamas is using a perceived weakness in the fabric of Israeli society because of the demonstrations against the current government may be true but it is irrelevant. The pontification that this attack 50 years after the Yom Kippur war is linked to the nascent Saudi – Israel “deal” is speculation. We all want to make sense of the senseless. This is what is true. Hamas wants to destroy Israel. And that means kill Jews.

So I am reposting an article by Bari Weiss. This is from “The Free Press”, described by Bari herself as “A new media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of American journalism.” It is described by others as conservative and progressive, controversial and incendiary. It always gives you something to think about. I am a paid subscriber – just so you know where I am coming from.

An aside: On Friday night I was at Temple Israel. The Rabbis were unrolling the Torah Scroll in the Social Hall and we were all standing in a circle as the parchment reached around the room and came into our white gloved hands. We were celebrating the Torah’s unending gift of ancient stories and moral truths, poetry, exhortations, unpleasant facts, history and ritual that some call God’s truth. I was joking with the person next to me that we were going to run out of Torah or that here I am standing on the outside of the Scroll. We thought that either of these were good Blog titles.

And the next morning we woke up. And our enemies (yes – our) reminded us of one of the oldest truths. But not now – now – read this and know:

ISRAEL AT WAR.

“You are about to withstand a barrage of lies about the war that broke out today in Israel.

Some of those lies will be explicit. Some of them will be lies of omission. Others will be lies of obfuscation. Or lies of minimization. Lies told by people who are simply too afraid to look at such an ugly, barbarous reality. And lies told by people whose true beliefs are too ugly to quite say aloud. Turn on cable news and you can hear some of them right now.

So let’s get some facts straight.

Israel was attacked last night. It was attacked by Hamas terrorists who streamed over the border from Gaza. They came on foot and on motorbikes. They came by truck and by car and by paraglider. They came to Israel to murder and maim and mutilate anyone they could find. And that is what they did.

It is impossible to know the numbers of the dead or the missing or the injured. 

The official numbers as of this writing: 300 Israelis dead; 1,590 wounded. And dozens—maybe many more—taken hostage into Gaza. They include women, elders, and children. 

But none of those words or numbers capture the evil of what unfolded today. 

Young festival-goers running for their lives. Teenage girls dragged by their hair by terrorists. An old woman forced to pose with a Hamas rifle. A mother—a hostage—cradling two redheaded babies in her arms.

I have friends in Israel. Each one of them has a story of someone they know who is missing. Or injured. Or killed. This was not a tit-for-tat. This was not a justifiable military response, or just another day in a cycle of violence. This was the slaughter of innocent civilians.

New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America today announced a protest in honor of the attacks. It’s called All Out for Palestine: “In solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid.” The anti-Zionist group IfNotNow explained the attacks as Israel’s fault and said of the dead Jews: “Their blood is on the hands of the Israeli government.” 

You will see a lot like this in the coming days. Ancient lies told in new language whose end is always, strangely, the same: a justification for genocide. 

Think about 9/11 and the kind of shock and terror we felt. That is what Israelis feel today. That is the level of devastation Israel is now experiencing. 

We are left with so many questions:

How did this happen?

Who is to blame for this catastrophic security failure? 

How will Israel respond? How will the country save the hostages in Gaza? 

What was the extent of Iran’s involvement in this sophisticated operation? 

Will this change the Biden administration’s policy toward the Islamic Republic? 

And so many more.

Those are the questions that require answers. But for today, while others offer mealy-mouthed pablum, we want to do something simple: to tell the truth—plainly—about a catastrophic day.

https://www.thefp.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwpompBhDZARIsAFD_Fp9zEvxIiuApM6gQQ_JXMwKwGgwYXs4lJMUmFLJDT5b3Ndvxm0YXn9MaAs7vEALw_wcB

Musings

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I don’t know about you but every day that I get up in the morning and see the sun rising I know I am blessed. I don’t know about you but every day when I get up in the morning and get out of bed without pain in unexpected places, I feel lucky. I don’t know about you but anytime my nose runs or my throat tickles or I cough I fleetingly ask myself is this COVID. We live in unsettling times. There is almost no such thing as normal. We think we are in control of what will happen tomorrow or the day after and the airlines throw a curve ball, or the weather does a number, or the rapid test shows two lines, and you are screwed.

It’s not that I am in a bad place. Not at all. I am aware how amazing my life is and that I live in interesting times. Not that they are perfect. Not that they aren’t worrisome. Not that sometimes I feel like we are living on the edge of a precipice. And tomorrow is either free fall into an unknown abyss worthy of depiction in a movie about the apocalypse or we are on the border of a new epoch about to soar into horizons we can barely imagine. There are so many things I don’t know.

I don’t know what it felt like to live as a Jew branded with a yellow star or cone or hat in some European ghetto or Middle Eastern Mellah. I don’t know what it felt like to live as a serf on land that was not my own in a time when life was valued by what you could produce and not by who you were. (Although we are not so distant from the same kind of yardstick). I don’t know what it was like to live without antibiotics or modern medicine when a simple cut could end your life. Or maybe I do – maybe we all do. This pandemic has certainly humbled us and taught that the simple act of covering your face can keep you safer. And things we once took for granted like sitting in a theater or dancing the hora (I just came from a beautiful wedding) or dining inside a restaurant can’t be taken for granted. Neither can attending a 4th of July parade.

I don’t even know what there is to say about all these guns. I don’t know why anyone needs semi-automatic weapons. There are no dinosaurs roaming our streets. There are no lions lurking in the tall grasses. There are no marauding masses breaking down the barricades. Most of us live in relative safety. Why the guns, the guns, the guns? The politically correct thing is to applaud the “bipartisan” gun bill just passed. But this is what I know. It is not enough. Not enough. Not enough. And I feel powerless to make effective change. I know: VOTE. I know: SPEAK OUT. I know: GIVE MONEY/TIME. But in the words of the prophet called Pete: “When will they every learn; when will they ever learn?” I don’t know about you but the fireworks didn’t do it for me the other night.

from the bottom up

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I feel so stupid starting off with a couple of stalks of flowers, when children are being killed in classrooms; the newest television series is produced by the January 6th committee; the rights of women to control their bodies seems to be eroding; there is a war in Europe and Ukrainians are dying for our freedom; and every day the cost of everything seems to be rising. I bought two ice cream cones yesterday at over $5.00 each. (Granted they were waffle cones, but they were classified as smalls.) And there is nothing complete about this list.

There is so much happening in our world it is hard to focus on the simple things that remind us that we are not the only living things that inhabit this orb that is steadily hurling through space in a predictable arc. I am looking at the last flowers of the Hollyhocks proudly blooming. They seem to bloom from the bottom up which by the way takes me right back to the politics of this fragile democracy we call America. It too blossoms and flourishes from the bottom up. My reading of American history is that the framers of our political system wanted our representatives to be responsive to us. They are not landed gentry; they are not noble men and women who are entitled to power based on their class. They are us and are supposed to be listening to us. When they don’t, America is precariously close to being broken.

I remember the wild hollyhocks from my youth when they would grow alongside the grey cement walls of the apartment building in Dorchester or maybe even the one we lived in before that in Roxbury. It’s a long time ago and almost the length of the Atlantic seashore away. I doubt if anyone planted them. In the world I remember no one had time to plant flowers. If you planted anything it was vegetables – most likely tomatoes – or am I confusing my Jewish upbringing with an idealized version of our Italian neighbors. And is all of this memory pieced together from the movies and stereotypes?

I didn’t plant these hollyhocks where they are growing now. When I bought them at a local nursery, they told me they would blossom every other year. So, I placed them near the house where I would remember to watch over them and patiently wait. But they had a mind of their own and somehow, they wound up happily flourishing near the tree halfway down the hill. I guess the world has a mind of its own; we probably should listen to it more often.

Lessons from the Paint Can

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White Dripping Paint On White Surface Free Stock Photo and Image

We watched Survivor last weekend on HBO MAX. We chose it as one of the ways we would observe Yom HaShoah. I was surprised how graphic some of the concentration camp scenes were and how bloody the boxing matches. It is the story of Harry Haft who survived Auschwitz by boxing for his captors and after the war lives in New York searching for his pre-war girlfriend. Near the end of the movie, one of the characters sings “God Bless America” in Yiddish. I found that moment especially touching. Maybe it was its inherent softness winding down this tough and sometimes brutal film. Maybe I was just manipulated by the story line and the film editor or director.

Or maybe it made me think how lucky we are to have been born in this land filled with so many blessings and so many challenges. My grandparents who left their home and left their past must have been desperate to risk so much to find a better life. I think there could be a film made of all our ancestors who began the long walk from dusty villages and oppressive cities to these shores that promised freedom. I think we underestimate their courage.

I only remember my father’s parents. My mother was an orphan by the age of 12. She was raised by her older sister, Aunt Molly whose husband was a house painter. He sat on my shoulder this afternoon as I painted squares of different colors of white on the walls in our apartment so we could decide which shade of white to paint. Here’s an easy confession and an obvious statement. I am a messy painter – I know there’s a way to keep the paint on the walls and off my hands, floor, and clothes, but Uncle Harry isn’t here to teach me. Thank God for water soluble paint.,

And what is it that we are being taught these days? That you can paint over truth? That you can whitewash the sometimes harsh and sometimes unsettling realities of the past? That you don’t have to pay attention to the way things were and if you have the power, you can paint the present with the colors of your choosing? My grandparents didn’t come to a land where the streets were paved with gold. They come to a tough country where you had to claw your way to survival. All of ours did. They fought with all their beings to realize their dreams. So what if the paint drips. Clean it up and try again.

Things are getting dark and dirty here. I guess my lesson to myself is – can’t step back and disengage. I hear Rabbi Tarfon: It is not your obligation to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. The fight for freedoms just got harder: time to get back into the ring. I am starting here:  https://www.plannedparenthood.org/

And So I Begin (Again)

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Eileen does not do digital fluidly. So, we have a drawer full of recipes she has printed from any number of internet sources. Yesterday I decided that I would begin to enter them into a recipe file on my desktop. I began by typing them. Then I figured out that I could take a picture of them with my phone and air drop them to my computer. That works with those recipes that are one pagers. I don’t know how to combine multi-page recipes into one doc. We all have our limitations, that’s for sure.

Now it is amazing to me that I have decided to go back to blogging and begin with food. Well, it is Passover and for some reason I am always hungry. And believe me I eat plenty of Matzah: Matzah with whipped butter and salt; matzah with thick strawberry jam; gluten free onion matzah with just about anything that isn’t sweet. Left over Sephardic charoset (the kind that is pasty) as candy. And those dark chocolate covered apricots they sell in Costco…. Don’t ask.

Which brings me back to why I am beginning again with food. Cause I can’t handle the world. There is a reason why some of my sunflowers hangs their heads in shame. They can’t look. It is too painful. The weight of the nightly news oppresses. Better to look away and find other distractions. I am guessing that if there are any of you who are still willing to read my “unplugged”, you are disappointed.

I am also. I don’t believe we have the luxury or a right to “look away”. Isn’t that the sin of all good people? And I’ve made my donations to Ukraine and HIAS and candidates I believe in; and I wear a mask on a plane; and I got my fourth booster; and I follow the news both morning and night; ….

But this is just almost too much. Maybe I’m just old. And it is easier to do wordle than to engage the world. Yea…. I agree. I need a more up lifting ending. But maybe you begin by recognizing where you are. And I am ashamed of the state of my mind, the state of my state and the state of our world. And I don’t see myself as depressed. I feel I am just stating what is real.

Enough. Tomorrow is a new day and a new dawn and the possibility of new blessings.

sunflowers-1-1Download
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It Is Fragile

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My tears started falling around 11:00 this morning. I was surprised at how touched I was by the pomp and ceremony surrounding the transition of political power in our country. The visuals were stunning. As soon as the clouds parted the Capitol Dome could not have been whiter against the blue sky. The flags unfurling and fluttering were pervasive. It was a proud moment for an American patriot.

Actually, the tears began last night when at sundown 400 lights illuminated the Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Each light represented 1000 American deaths to Covid-19 as of that moment. President Biden and Vice-President Harris both spoke simply and directly. More Americans have died from the Pandemic than American soldiers died in WW II. No one was being blamed; no truth was being withheld. It was simply and profoundly a moment to allow us to do what we should be doing – recognize the great sadness our nation has been suppressing – pay tribute to the lives that are no more.

I am so filled with hope. I am not naïve. I am sure there will be more political wrangling and machinations. It will not be easy (in the word of Joe Biden’s speech) “to end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural vs. urban, conservative vs. liberal.” But I believe “we can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts If we show a little tolerance and humility …”.

Those words are key for me. Tolerance implies that I am willing to consider other points of view. Humility is more complicated. For me it is about accepting both intellectually and emotionally that I am not the center of the universe. That there is a place for all of us in this wide wide land we call home.

But as the day ends and the smoke of the fireworks settles this I know. It is fragile. It is beautiful and it is hopeful, but it is tenuous. Quoting the Psalmist, President Biden reminded us: “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Today was a time for joy. We have set our tears aside for the moment. Tomorrow for sure will not have the magic of today. But this I hold on to. It is a faith statement. We can be decent again. We can solve problems again. We can be the dream we call America and wipe the tears of a country climbing out of mourning.

And Then There Was Darkness

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(I wrote this yesterday as a meditation before lighting the lights of Shabbat and I read it at Temple Israel last night. Eileen said I should post it on my blog. It is always good to listen to Eileen.)

And then there was darkness. Banners waving; Flags burnished; T-shirts announcing they came to destroy our democracy.

They came on foot and they came with the urging of a man we are ashamed to call President. They came marching and chanting and they mounted the steps and they climbed the walls and they breached the fence. The barricades of decency destroyed.

And then there was darkness. The domed sanctuary to our freedom defiled by their anger, their hate, their venom poisoning the electoral process. Their truth the lies of a political expediency.

They came marching and chanting. And they broke the police lines and they shattered the sacred halls of liberty and they leered into their cameras calling themselves Patriots.

And then there was darkness.. And slowly reinforcements arrived. And belatedly the National Guard was called up. And step by step and bit by bit they were gently

Too gently

Pushed back and the mob dissipated into the night where they find a comfortable refuge. And the darkness became light. And the House of the People went back to do its work. The darkness became light when in the earliest of hours a glimmer of hope as a new President and Vice President were certified, announced, anointed.

Liberty was proclaimed throughout this broken land and we began to breathe again. Slowly and filled with worry but breathing. Astonished and full of questions and concerns, but breathing, heartbroken and might I say: angry.

But the darkness became light.

With this as our prayer, with this as our hope this glimmer, this spark, this turn toward the moon and the sun let us say these familiar words finding in them comfort and strength.

Let us kindle these holy flames and with them let us welcome Shabbat.

May its radiance illumine our hearts.